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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28346835">I Don't Know About The Lake (But Every Time You Say My Name You Make Ripples In Me)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamasortofvillain/pseuds/Iamasortofvillain'>Iamasortofvillain</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Long Shot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:22:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>65,897</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28346835</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamasortofvillain/pseuds/Iamasortofvillain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A three-part piece in which Dani Clayton is something uniquely designed for Jamie to crave and love and cherish, and Jamie is the home Dani's been always searching for</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dani Clayton &amp; Edmund O'Mara, Dani Clayton &amp; Jamie, Dani Clayton/Jamie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>95</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After your father dies, you think you want a careful death, something you can control, something to scroll past, nothing to follow you, nothing to upset the people you love.</p><p>After your father dies you watch your mother spiral into a simple mess, and you think your death won't leave loose ends. You'd much prefer to disappear without a trace, leaving behind a shadow, rather than a corpse, something people will stumble upon by mistake and won't be able to remember who that shadow belonged to.</p><p>Danielle Clayton, your tombstone would announce, and people would scratch their heads and wrinkle their brows and wonder who the hell is lying here.</p><p>(You don't know her either).</p><p>Your mother is clutching her wine glass in a vise grip, knuckles white with the force of it.</p><p>"You should go out and play," she says in a distant tone, stare fixed on the wall opposite her, though it's easy to tell she isn't looking at it but through it, into some distant memory you will never be able to decipher.</p><p>You don't tell her you don't have anyone to play with, because you know it wouldn't matter. She doesn't care.</p><p>You're a solitary kind of a kid, always have been, but up till your father died, you never thought of yourself as lonely. Now you feel alone. Your only true ally, your strong blonde pal, your blue-eyed dad, the one who scooped you off the floor and put you on his shoulders and taught you how to ball, is gone, and your mother is too wrapped up in her own misery to glance down and look at you.</p><p>"Okay," You keep your voice bright, your smile steady, as you put on your shoes and your jacket. You go outside, creep into the back yard and cry ferociously for your lost father and your absent mother and for things you don't yet understand.</p><p>When you come back inside, your mother scolds you. If she notices your puffed eyes or red nose, she doesn't comment.</p><p>"I was worried <i>sick</i>! Where the <i>hell</i> did you disappear to? And at this time of year, at <i>this hour</i>! Have you got any idea how <i>irresposable</i> that is, Danielle? You're not a baby anymore. I have enough grief in my life without you adding to it!"</p><p>"Mum – "</p><p>"I don't want to hear it! Go wash your hands and come help me set the table for dinner".</p><p>You want to protest, to remind her it was her idea, that you didn't really want to go anywhere, but the look on your mother's face is dark and ugly and something you only seen directed at your father, and only once before, when you were very little.</p><p>Now you don't have a father to catch this sort of anger, and the full extent of your mother's fury is directed at you.</p><p>"I'm sorry, I didn't want to worry you. I just thought – "</p><p>"Don't talk back at me, Danielle. Just do what you're told".</p><p>You're eight and you know better than to argue.</p><p>//</p><p>You have never learned to cry gracefully, silently, with a feminine style as were expected. Your tears are never rolling down your cheeks, never pearl-shaped and innocent, never hot and quiet and poetic.</p><p>You stare wide, luminous eyes shining and lower lip quivering and cheeks red and smeared with tears. When you cry you do it with your whole heart, you snore and turn red in the face and you gasp and fight for air. When you cry your nose run, your fists clench and you crush your thumb into strong, small fingers, hard enough to hurt.</p><p>Because you don't know how to cry in silence, you never cry in public. Not in darknened theaters, not in empty bathrooms, not in Eddie's bedroom. You cry instead at home, at the back yard, where a wall separates your red home from your neighbour's, where no one can see you or disturb you or laugh at your embarrassing breakdown.</p><p>You cry where no one can see you, broken and safe, alienated from your fellow humans, something wet and something scary and something loud.</p><p>You cry with shimmering fragments of glass in your throat, choking noises, and hot tears. You cry as if your world is falling apart and you wish you knew how to stop.</p><p>//</p><p>Outside, the wind is moving the trees and it's quiet. Your mother has a friend over, though it's too late for him to stay.</p><p>Your door is slightly open. You never liked to sleep with your door closed, and you can see the light from your mother's room, just across the hall, a target circle on the ceiling. It shifts and you can hear two voices.</p><p>"The kid is in the other room," a man's voice. He trips on syllables and vowels, probably more than slightly drunk.</p><p>"She's not gonna hear anything, Richard. She's asleep".</p><p>"Just across the ha – " and then you hear breathing, a fast panicked sound as though your mother is running, then her voice begins to twist, not like her real voice, but a desperate, beggar's whine.</p><p>"Please, please".</p><p>You put your pillow over your head, terrified. You don't want to hear it, whatever it is. You want it to be through. You want her friend to leave.</p><p>Your mother is praying to herself and Richard is praying in return.</p><p>"Jesus!"</p><p>"Jesus!"</p><p>"Oh, god!"</p><p>"Yes, please… Jesus!"</p><p>Then something different, not a word but pure pain, clear and shrilling and scary and the trap closes and you feel like in the morning, you won't find your mother. You'll be all alone.</p><p>When you wake up, your mother is making pancakes in the kitchen. She smiles, broad and scary and nothing like herself, and tells you to go wash your face before Richard wakes up.</p><p>You don't say anything.</p><p>//</p><p>You're always <i>Danielle</i>. Never <i>Dani</i>. And you make a habit of listening carefully, of murmuring and nodding at the right times, of training your blue eyes, the eyes you inherited from your late father, on whoever is talking.</p><p>Your mother doesn't find it very cute. Instead, she tells you not to stare, to sit straight, to stop fidgeting.</p><p>You have a habit of biting your nails, and the corner of your fingers. You lavish at them, you make yourself bleed until the skin is hard and leathery, a patch of scar-like tissue on the tip of your thumb and forefinger, something you can press your nails into and <i>dig</i>.</p><p>Your mother looks at you with disappointment and disgust and your stomach contracts and plummets and you overcome with shame. You know you're being reproached, but you're not sure what for.</p><p>You like to sit and leaf through old photo albums when you're mother isn't home or when she's too drunk and tired to bother coming downstairs. The albums are heavy and the covers are bound with black leather. You're not supposed to touch them, but you do it anyway. It's a small act of defiance your mother doesn't know about.</p><p>You watch yourself grow from a healthy fat baby with a toy or a bottle in her mouth to a smiling toddler, then into a skinny thing with sticking out ears and big blue eyes, almost too big for your face. Some photos are taken outside, your father is lying on a washed-out grass, your mother in a flower-print dress. Some photos are homey and casual, so casual you don't know why they were taken in the first place.</p><p>You don't have any photos at all after your father died, and it kind of feels like your mother has given up on you.</p><p>Maybe, you think, it's hard for her to record your growth when there isn't someone to share it with.</p><p>You ask her, only once, and she rages. You hate to see your mother cry, miserable and hopeless and small, reduced to angry sobs, so you pat her lightly on the shoulder and let her hold you and cry into your sweater.</p><p>You don't ask her again.</p><p>//</p><p>Eddie is your first real friend. He looks at you commandingly, eyes bright behind new golden rimmed glasses, strong and grim and forceful (something that will only intensify as the years would pass). He has a gliding way of pushing you, of pulling you, of twisting you around. You play outside and you go to school together and you visit his house, where his mother, a tall elegant woman, makes you real meals you will remember the taste of years after seeing her for the last time.</p><p>He's sweet and you like him. He has a shy manner to him and when you catch him staring, he smiles a goofy little smile and drops his chin to his chest, breathing heavily.</p><p>When you're both a little older, Eddie lifts heavy things in his arms. He's a boy and he thinks it impresses you. There is a feverish sort of air around him these days and you frown at him because you don't understand those lingering looks and dopey smiles and out of duty, out of some sort of sick gratitude, you follow him.</p><p>You're pleased and Eddie's feelings aren't hurt and you appreciate his little gestures, you really do, even though you don't really feel like you deserve it all.</p><p>You grow from children to young adolescents, teenagers on the verge of puberty. Eddie's eyes are glowing now in a different kind of way, signs of light and something dangerous (something trapping) shine behind his glasses. He begins to give off a certain horrible energy, like closed doors of a tomb.</p><p>You try to decide whether or not you love him like you're supposed to. It shouldn't matter, but there are moments of curiosity that become more important than peace and it's horrifying to learn you're not in love with him.</p><p>If he asks, you don't know if you'll be able to tell him the truth. You sum him up and try to divide him into categories. He's your best friend and he isn't like the other boys in your school. He's moody sometimes, but not enough to bother you and he always has an encouraging word to say when you're feeling down.</p><p>You are very fond of him. You'd rather have him around than not, though it could be nice if he meant to you more than that. The fact that he doesn't make you sad and you try not to think about it too much.</p><p>When he asks you to be his girlfriend, you tell him you will, without a moment of hesitation. It's not a real decision. It's something you know is expected of you.</p><p>You don't want to kiss him, but you do it anyway because you never learned to haggle, and you're afraid of hurting him, or insulting him in front of his friends.</p><p>(What you really want is to kiss the dark-skinned girl from across the street. She has a cloud of black hair around her face and she paints her lips blood-red. When you stare at her from your kitchen window, she smiles and waves, and your heart skyrockets, you can feel the pulse in your back teeth).</p><p>(It's a scary thought you know you're not supposed to have, because when you ask Eddie about this sort of thing, he spits a word that doesn't sound mean but in his mouth sounds dirty, so you don't talk about it again).</p><p>(You make yourself stop watching the girl from across the street).</p><p>//</p><p>Sometimes it seems like you and Eddie are speaking two different languages, something that cannot be solved, a problem Eddie actively maintenance. The barrier, it seems, doesn't bother him as long as you press tightly to his side in the movie theater, as long as he can wrap his arm around your shoulders when you move swiftly through the school halls, as long as you dance with him in dim-lit rooms and call him your boyfriend.</p><p>Judy is smiling at you with tears of joy in her eyes.</p><p>"Oh, sweet thing," she says, her throat clogged, and she sniffles. "You are making Edmund so happy".</p><p>You don't know how to answer, so you just smile.</p><p>At times you feel like the fury burning inside you is too much to handle and you will have to throw something at him, or the wall, or at your mother, who's telling you you're not good enough to keep a boy like Eddie O'Mara.</p><p>"Why?" you say through gritted teeth. You've had enough of her mean little comments. And it's not as if you're spending a lot of time with her, lately. You find yourself, more frequently than you'd care to, waking up in Eddie's room, pressed to the wall, trapped under his arm.</p><p>"Too much like your father, that's why." She says over the brim of a wine glass.</p><p>"It's really hurtful when you say it like that." You tell her with a sad tight smile you don't feel.</p><p>"You just wait and see." She answers, an apology nowhere in sight. She's nodding to some inner monologue, not even bothering to look at you as she talks.</p><p>"I know what I'm talking about".</p><p>You don't tell her your father didn't leave. He didn't disapear one day. He died. Sometimes you can't help but wonder if being furious at him is your mother's way of coping with the loss.</p><p>//</p><p>Your bitterness about Eddie surprises you. You've been together for a long time now, you even let him lay you gently on his bed and take your clothes off and slip inside you, hot and painful and sweaty, his hands on either side of your head.</p><p>He wants to get married. He's been asking for years now. At first, it was a sort of game, new and funny and a little silly. You crafted the ability to deny his repeating question in ways that never injured his dignity and he got bolder and bolder, as if your answer wasn't good enough. As if by mere pressure he could make you see his side of things.</p><p>On a Monday afternoon, you help his mum with the dishes and ask her about marriage. You wipe a plate and she stops soaping the remaining glasses and glances quickly at you, a little suspicious and a little out of breath.</p><p>"You just have to make an emotional commitment, honey," she says, her voice going radio, as if for a hidden audience. It's only the two of you inside the house. Eddie and his brothers are out in the back yard, preparing the grill to the delightful shrills of their father.</p><p>"It's a little like skiing, you can't see in advance what will happen but you have to let go and trust".</p><p>You want to ask what is it you need to let go of, but you don't. you are measuring yourself against what she's saying. Maybe this is why you don't feel the way you suppose to feel about Eddie because you don't know what is it you need to let go of.</p><p>"It's just like love, only with tying bonds." She says and smiles.</p><p>You don’t think loving Eddie is anything like skiing. It's more like jumping off a cliff. It's the feeling you have when you're with him, when he kisses you, too eager and too damp. </p><p>You feel like you're in the air, going down, waiting for the smash at the bottom.</p><p>"Honey," Judy is looking at you, all serious and stern, but somehow very gentle.</p><p>"Hmm?"</p><p>"Do you want to marry Edmund?" She asks this in a sympathetic tone as if she's trying not to scare you away.</p><p>"He hadn't asked me." You say quickly.</p><p>"Yes, but do you <i>want</i> to?"</p><p>You hadn't told anybody about the way you feel around pretty girls. You haven't written it down in any journals, you haven't doodled any names in the back of your notebooks. There is no reason she would suspect something out of the ordinary. Nobody can find out the usual way. There isn't any picture of any girl you liked, hidden in a drawer where someone can stumble across and get outraged or astonished or sad. You have always behaved as though nothing is out of the ordinary, as though being with Eddie didn't take away from you, exported, deported a section of your life you have had flashed out.</p><p>It's silly. You don't even have to think about it.</p><p>You keep your eyes on the plate you're still holding, fidgeting nervously with it, now that Judy is searching your reddening face.</p><p>"I want to." You say in a small voice. A voice of a coward.</p><p>She pats you on the back, then gathers you in her arms and hugs you tight.</p><p>"Oh, sweetheart. How did Edmund ever get so lucky?"</p><p>Because you're a coward, you just sink into her embrace and don't say anything.</p><p>//</p><p>"We should get married," Eddie says and it's more serious now. It's not a question.</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>"It's logical. Why not do it?"</p><p>Because you don't want to. Because it would be a sacrifice, of your reluctance, your distaste.</p><p>"I love you." He says like repeating a skipping rhyme.</p><p>"Sometimes," he says, placing the words evenly and deliberately when you don't answer. "I get the feeling you don't give a shit about me".</p><p>"I do!" you say. "I do give a shit about you!" and you wonder if it's the equivalent of saying you love him.</p><p>Eddie has this look on his face you don't really like or understand.</p><p>"No you don't," he says, unhappy rather than angry and it's worse. You can cope with anger, but your small curly-haired friend is becoming someone you can barely recognise, growing larger, becoming alien, three-dimensional and you start to panic.</p><p>'Prove your love,' you heard his friends say. 'Let me fuck you'.</p><p>Your mother thinks it's the other way around. "Prove your love, you really want to marry me so let me fuck you instead. This is how it is, Danielle. You really want to fuck, let me marry you instead. As long as there's a victory, some flag they can wave".</p><p>//</p><p>You brush your hair in front of the mirror, delaying a little, then turn back to your papers that are due next week.</p><p>You've always wanted to be a teacher, ever since the first day of your first day at school. You're still a little awkward with standing in front of a big audience, but kids are different. Kids don't make you feel strapped or nervous or like you've grown an extra limb right in the middle of your forehead. They are not pretentious, they don't try to be mean or charming, they are who they are and you find that you're good with dealing with them – even with the worst ones.</p><p>Eddie says it's not a very realistic thing to do, to be a teacher. He says education is important, and so is college, even for women, but he says you should have studied something you'd be able to use and earn real money. He says it's cute but misguided, to want to help. Especially to kids. Especially in a classroom.</p><p>You usually listen to him, because he has good advice, but on this one you confront him, fists balled at your sides, eyes burning.</p><p>"Now, don't be like that." He says, shying away from your anger.</p><p>Eddie doesn't like you when you're angry. He doesn't like when you're arguing, or when you trying to put your foot down. You've always compromised and it always saves your friendship.</p><p>After years of being Eddie's friend (Eddie's <i>girlfriend</i>) you learned the sort of thing he wants. He wants Danielle; elegant and stylized, decoratively coloured with pastels, like pastisserie cakes. And you do it. You always do it. You imitate everything fake until it becomes part of you.</p><p>"I'm sorry." He says because he thinks it's what you want to hear.</p><p>Then his hands, intelligent and soft and shaking, move over you delicately, as a blind man reading braille. His hands are skilled, molding you like a vase, learning you. He repeats a pattern he's tried before, and he finds what he's working for and your body doesn't respond like you want it to, but it's enough for him.</p><p>You touch him, too. You slide your hands up his back, under his arms. Your touch is educated and crisp and he doesn't mind it too. He puts his face between your shoulder and your neck and closes his eyes. He keeps his eyes close when he's pounding into you, breathing heavy, mournful, and pained and when he finishes, he rests on top of you.</p><p>You smooth his hair back from his face.</p><p>"I love you, Danielle." He says as if it's a magic phrase that solves any problems that might arise between the two of you.</p><p>You kiss the top of his head.</p><p>His smell is all wrong.</p><p>//</p><p>Eddie asks you to marry him.</p><p>He asked you to marry him when you were ten and you dismissed it as a joke, as a prank, as a thing boys do to tease girls later. You are stupified, though compassionate, and you stroke his hair and tell him you're too young.</p><p>When you're ten, you dismiss it as a kids' play. You have no idea the clear sorrow, the agonized expression on his face is not an act. In front of your ordinary house of red bricks and white front door, you have no clue.</p><p>Eddie, as it turns out later, is not discouraged at all. Over the next few years he behaves as if he'd been expecting a rejection, as a matter of form. It's modest and proper of you to refuse him and now all you need is persuasion. After the correct amount, you'd give in. Your answer is a game, not something you can ever really mean. Nothing to think about seriously.</p><p>This is how he approaches it. Always a game. Your answers don't hold real weight.</p><p>As you grew older, Eddie took to flirting. He smiled and wiggled his eyebrows across the room when he thought nobody was watching. He's modest and subtle enough, but persistant. He called you over the phone and sighed and pleaded, watching you whenever you get together. He took you out for expensive dinners, he bought you presents he knew you'd like, her kissed you chastely on the cheek.</p><p>It always felt like you're being bribed. You felt sufocated.</p><p>The whole thing had the air of ceremony, a performance that is necessary to go through and you have no real excuse to dismiss it.</p><p>When you're seventeen, you think it will be easy to give in, to say yes, to let Eddie take over your life, make all the decisions, but you don't want to be his wife. You don't want to stay by his side forever, not when you start to realise your gaze is lingering longer and longer on skirted legs and long ponytails and peaking blossoms behind tight sweaters.</p><p>You love Eddie. You always loved him. He's your best friend and you are weirdly touched by his efforts. It's sincere and odd and you like him, but it's also disturbing because you feel like there is only one possible outcome from this.</p><p>The sky is clear but there are clouds moving in front of the sun and when they hide the burning light, the heat shuts off.</p><p>You're twenty-seven and Eddie asks you to marry him, earnest and with gleaming eyes and there is no action you can perform except nodding, saying yes, after which you let him swip you into his arms and kiss your forehead.</p><p>You don't want to be standing next to him, engulfed in him. You want to go back to where you started, where there are no distractions and no duties and no panic, just two friends hiding behind bushes, pretending to be someone else.</p><p>//</p><p>Planning a wedding feels a lot like gladiators fight, colosseum in blood-red, vulgar and framed with guilt and noise and turmoil, cheering crowds around, death on the sand, in the middle. Eddie isn't much of a help, and all around you, you find wild animals growling, snarling, screaming. You feel like Judy is the only weeping martyr in the crowd, lending a helping hand when you feel like crying or screaming or pulling out your hair in one desperate last act of free will.</p><p>You feel like someone who's being led to their sacrifice, while all around you is laughter and joy and you are angry and frightened, performing for someone who doesn't even see you for who you truely are.</p><p>You are sitting in the front row center, not moving, barely smiling, just to satisfy a man you don't really know anymore. From time to time you make a slight gesture, some move to try and preserve or destroy and it's just a show but it's the only thing for you now.</p><p>//</p><p>Eddie has a habit of seeing the present as though it is already the past, bandaged in gauzy nostalgia. Every resturant you eat in he leaves with a sigh and a backward glance. He speaks of things you have done the week before as if they were snapshots in some long buried photograph album. Each of you gestures is petrified as you perform it, each kiss embalmed as if he is saving things up. You feel like a collectible.</p><p>"Eddie," you say, a little scared and a little annoyed.</p><p>"What?" he is already defending himself. He knows your tone. He recognises it from previous talks.</p><p>"I'm not dead," you tell him. "I'm not dying," You've said it more than once.</p><p>"Okay." He answers, solemnly.</p><p>"Why are you lookig at me like that?"</p><p>"You're going to leave me." He says.</p><p>"Where would I go?" It's a strange reply, but one Eddie appriciates. He likes to be the one and only. He doesn't necessarily need your grand love or huge gestures or a wildly beating heart. He wouldn't believe you if you told him you'd rather stay by his side than go anywhere else.</p><p>He has moods now after he put the ring on your finger. He is hostile towards you when he feels insecure, and the fact you agreed to marry him only makes him more bitter. More scared.</p><p>"You act like you enjoy challenging me".</p><p>"Isn't that silly." You say.</p><p>"But you are".</p><p>"Oh, come on".</p><p>"You have someone else?"</p><p>"What the hell do you mean?" It's been an especially nice afternoon and you feel silly. Did he notice the way you looked at the waitress? Did he catch anything other than friendly curiosity on your face? Did you sound weird when you thanked her? Did your smile looked queer?</p><p>Your lower lip is trembling and you begin to cry. Eddie puts his arms around you and you hug him back, oozing tears like an orphan, like an onion, like a slug sprinkled with salt.</p><p>"Oh, Danielle. I'm sorry," he says. Lately, he apologises a lot. "I don't know why I said that. I'm so sorry".</p><p>"I love you," you say between damp snorts, and you do. It isn't ground shattering, it doesn't make your head spin, but he is familiar and good and you love him. <i>He's your best friend</i>.</p><p>"I'm sorry. you're right. I love you too. I'm just depressed because it's raining".</p><p>You feel like a monster, a large, blundering monster, irredeemably shallow. You care about him, why can't you just fall in love with him like you meant to? It's all wrong.</p><p>Eddie is looking at you, so sad and so trusting and so hopeless, you know consolation is impossible, so you throw your arms around him and hug him tighter.</p><p>//</p><p>You're the kind of woman to volunteer to help, even in the midst of planning your own wedding.</p><p>At high school, you used to be a good sport. You decorate the gym and draw banners and then you went home and read your books, while Eddie was at your side, eating a peanut butter sandwich, listening to his mother marvel over how good you two look together.</p><p>You don't dance at balls. You only slow-dance in Eddie's arms at his friends' parties, when it's dark and everybody is slightly drunk. You are sweet and kind and blonde, you're non-threatening and the girls gather around you, confident and gigling, telling you what a wonder you are, not getting close enough to be your friends.</p><p>You watch these girls and you try not to sigh or stare or want. You try to direct it all to Eddie, but he is just isn't right. He's too big and too broad at the shoulders. His smell is wrong, his jaw is too rough, his abdomen is too tight.</p><p>You long after soft mouths and smooth skin and the type of excitement Eddie doesn't give you, even when you lay under him in his teen bed and let him sigh and groan above you.</p><p>It was easier in college, though tougher in other aspects. You were good at keeping up with your classes and you were insterested in what your proffesors had to say, but the need to get closer to someone, anyone, other than Edmun O'Mara was proving to be a kind of a nagging problem, though you never acted on it, just sighed and longed and kept on dreaming.</p><p>When you land a job at an elementary school, Eddie is thrilled for you, beaming proud and goofy, pushing his glasses up his nose and you will yourself to love him, to love him more than you love him, to have your heart pick its pace at the sight of him.</p><p>He's your home and your best friend, you try to reason. Maybe you are in love with him, and you just don't know it.</p><p>"Once we get married, you can just relax. I'll take care of everything".</p><p>You smile a nervous smile. "I like my job." You say truthfuly and it hurts you to need to explain, to offer him your vision, to fight for what makes you feel good and what you know you're good at.</p><p>Why the hell should you sit home when you're so good at what you do? It's a meaningful job.</p><p>"Yes, I know. But it won't be necessary. It will look so weird, you having to work, once we're married".</p><p>You want to yell in his face, tell him everything, explain how your heart is racing when you see a girl's bare back, dark and smooth. You want to tell him how once, a long time ago, you almost kissed someone in a movie theater, when he was busy with some of his friends. She was tall and dark and gorgeous and you still think of her hands sliding up your arms sometimes.</p><p>You want to trust him, you want to express you feelings, to be honest. But Eddie's eyes are dark and searching and he looks at you, so in love and hopeful and mature, nothing like the boy you met so many years ago, and you want to maintain his illusion if you, keep it intact.</p><p>It's been years since you told him anything important. It's not like you can't keep this up. Keep him happy.</p><p>Everything to prevent a disaster.</p><p>//</p><p>Eddie is a dark shadow against the dark wall. His hands descend, zipper sound, metal teeth, and he sinks into the bed.</p><p>You don't want him in you.</p><p>"Don't," you say as he lowered himself down on you. "I don't want you to".</p><p>"What's wrong?" he isn't angry, exactly, but he's hurt. He is still pining you to the bed, hands planted on the mattress. His teeth are sharp against your lips and he is shoving against you, insistent and hot, like arguing.</p><p>"Eddie," you say. You slide your arm between you, against his chest. You can feel the soft hair on your bare arm. You are stopping him and he's looking down at you, squinting, almost blind without his glasses.</p><p>"You alright?"</p><p>"I just don't want to".</p><p>By the time you're straightening in his bed, he already has reached the door.</p><p>"Eddie?" you say, softly, but he has already vanished.</p><p>Later it occues to you that he never asked if you loved him. He got the order wrong. He asked you to marry him and he said he loved you, but he never asked whether you love him back. It was supposed to come first.</p><p>//</p><p>That night, You dream.</p><p>There's a big house in your dream, dark and old and red, standing somber against the grey sky.</p><p>There's a smile in your dream, crooked and easy and full of secrets, whispering something you cannot understand against your own lips, the accent is all wrong, nothing like the happy drawling accent you're so used to you think of it as neutral.</p><p>There's a woman in your dream, no one you've ever seen before. She's golden and foreign and she has dark hair shot through with unexpected fleams of gold. It's curly and messy and it shines against her skin.</p><p>There is a name in your dream, a sort of pet name, not a birth-name. It's funny and fitting and you like it, even though you think it might be a sort of joke on your expanse. If it is, it doesn't feel like one.</p><p>When you wake up, this is what you remember: in the sunlight her hair has hidden threads of colour buried in the curls, her eyes are bright, shifting from green to grey and sometimes to pale blue.</p><p>When you wake up, this is what you remember: she is someone you knew a thousand years ago or someone you will know a year from now, and there is something sinuous and dark about the way your heart flutters in your chest.</p><p>//</p><p>Your mother isn't happy with your job, with the way you do things, with your relationship, though she likes Eddie enough when he's around, charming and smiling and gentle.</p><p>You always wanted to find out her secret, to understand her, to make her soething proud and supportive, but you never could and by the time you're out of college and agreed to marry Eddie, you don't even try.</p><p>There is no triumph in the way she says she's happy for you and Eddie. Nothing responsive or grand and you don't push. You know she wants you to do well, but the specifics are blurred and you still cannot humor her. Whatever you accomplish is never the right thing and eventually, you stop trying altogether.</p><p>Eddie smiles at you fondly. He's forgiving her for her cold shoulder, for her zero help, for not even bothering to show to your engagement party, a detail that stings more than it should.</p><p>"She's doing the best she can." He tells you and you smile and press your palm to his cheek.</p><p>"I know." You say even though it's not true.</p><p>He gives you a quick look, triumphant and appraising, as though he's just won something; not a war but a lottery, maybe.</p><p>Your mother's disappointment is a huge edgeless cloud of encoherent matter which refuses to be shaped into anything for which she could get a prize. She sees you as a reproach to her, the embediment of her failure, her depression, her endless loss, and it's the image you carry around for years, letting it hang from your neck like an iron locket, the name 'Danielle' spelled on its front.</p><p>"Just like your father," she kept saying for years, even after you graduated college and got twenty-five little humans to try and shape into something other than complete brats.</p><p>You never talked back to her, keeping your eyes low, your voice calm, your smile easy. You still don't talk back to her even now, which does nothing to discourage her.</p><p>"Heartless wertch! Abandoned me, left me here to cope with everything by myself".</p><p>You don't know if she's talking about your father or yourself, since you've moved to a small place with Eddie, a thing his parents were so proud about as if you accomplished something worth praising.</p><p>"You can look at me funny all you like, Danielle," she spits at you when you're leaving after an exhaustive dinner, to go back home (home to Eddie and his dismissive little waves).<br/>
"I hope someone will break your heart like this, one day".</p><p>"Okay," you say brightly, swallowing hot tears.</p><p>"I hope you'll understand one day how I'm feeling, though it will be too late for me".</p><p>"Bye-bye, now. I love you, mum".</p><p>You leave without another word.</p><p>She doesn't say 'I love you' back.</p><p>You knew she wouldn't.</p><p>//</p><p>You love your job at the elementary school. You like it better than any job you ever had as a teenager, any job you maintained while attending college, as well.</p><p>It's untidy and a little tawdry, very very tiring, but you walk through the halls without feeling too out of place. The crowd is small and loud and excited, and even when they cross lines, when they throw small stones or push each other into mud puddles, or tie girls to the fence by their own jumping-ropes, you find you're angry but forgiving.</p><p>Children, you find with a mixed delight, are easy. Children are what you know.</p><p>(Children who have lost their parents, children who are lonely and sad and going through something bigger than their minds can comprehend, are especially lovable. You find their hermit-crab habits familiar. Watching them trying to navigate their new normal is heartbreaking. It's like they don't know the customs like they are from another culture, flung out of space, and they look like easy prey to the other kids, who still get to go back to both their mother and father and have both of them sitting at the dinner table, arguing and grunting as they are. The kids who lost one or both their parents made used, they are chased and captured and inflicted little tricks and minor tortures upon. They are closed off and it arouses in other, happier kids, disgust and pity and desire to torment and reform. You stay late after school hours, wandering the empty halls with a special small figure, letting them choke through tears things they are too scared to talk about with anyone else).</p><p>(You don't feel special, but you are honored to be trusted with their little secrets and small, world-shuttering sadness).</p><p>On breaks you stay at the teacher's room, chatting happily with older colleagues and drinking iced coffe. Sometimes you watch over the cafeteria with other young women who are about your age, though you are all too busy to enjoy this. You eat your lunch and wander around, stopping to watch a group playing in the yard, from time to time you separate wild fights.</p><p>You teach four graders. Twenty-five pairs of eyes staring at you. it's fairly easy, and satisfying. You stand at the front of the class, sometimes you sit at your table, talking about things you know they care about because it has nothing to do with the next exam or numbers or words to memorize.</p><p>When you were their age, these kinds of classes were your favourite; cutting figures and making decorations and listening to new facts about space and far-away countries.</p><p>You make a point of putting a halt on the fourth grade studying routine and let them unwind.</p><p>(Just a little. Just so they know it's okay to breathe).</p><p>You get a couple of angry calls from concerned parents for your unconventional teaching method and you're summoned to give an account of your behaviour to the man at the top of the food chain, but principal Oyelowo is smiling his big conspiring smile and waves you off out of his office.</p><p>After a couple of years, you are surprised to learn parents request their kids to be put in your class. You are shocked. You are dumbfounded.</p><p>Principal Oyelowo smiles and squeezes your shoulder and shakes his big shaved head, disbelievingly laughing, when you ask why.</p><p>"Miss Clayton," he boomes in his deep voice. "For heaven's sake".</p><p>//</p><p>You're not sure when you started to suspect the truth about yourslef, about Eddie, what you are, and what he is turning into. Part of it arrived swift as flags, unfurling and sudden, but part is something that took you some time to figure out. Something that takes time to decipher.</p><p>From where you are now, it seems to you you've always known, everything, time is compressed like your fist, crushing your thumb, and everything is dark around you. You hold the knowledge inside you, clues and solutions and the power of the forbidden thing you are.</p><p>You must have been seeing poorly, translating badly, and now you're bound to a life you don't want. You look at yourself in the mirror and barely recognise yourself. Who have you become?</p><p>You are exhausted after work, your ears are ringing and your energy drained and Eddie doesn't let you complain, sitting right on the sofa, waiting for you with a stern look and with troubled eyes.</p><p>He becomes a little suspicious after you move in together, asking where you're sneaking off to when you have to work late, or go back to school after hours for some project or other. His eyes are glowing in the dark and you start dodging him.</p><p>It's beneath both of you, beneath Eddie's dignity to accuse you of anything, and you don't really know what he thinks you're doing when you're not together. He can't voice his concerns so he starts throwing tantrums. He gets silent and angry because he wants to do something when you're busy and there is no way for you to get out of your school duties.</p><p>He starts attacking your work, calling it unimportant and a waste of time, and you answer sweetly that you like it. You like helping kids, especially the tough ones.</p><p>He huffs. "Yeah, right".</p><p>You say, "Goodnight. We'll talk in the morning".</p><p>Eddie begins to frighten you a little. He waits for you at the top of the stairs, standing there like a newel post, not saying anything, a grim expression on his face and his hands crossed tight around his chest. You come up and he fixes you with a reproachful glare. A vindictive stare.</p><p>"This is not a way to start our marriage, Eddie." You say and your voice sounds false to your own ears.</p><p>"So you don't want to marry me?" he spits.</p><p>It would be easy to say 'no', or 'yes' but instead, you say:</p><p>"I want you to stop doing whatever it is you doing right now," it's been an especially long day and all you want is curl up in bed and let him brush your hair with clumsy hands until you fall asleep like he used to do when you were younger.</p><p>"Do you have a lover?" he asks blatantly.</p><p>"You're being ridiculous".</p><p>Making love with him, though it was never a pleasurable thing for you, begins to resemble a shark fight. Eddie is not gentle, as he used to be. He is pinching and biting and you think it would have been alright if not for the baleful glances and the oppressive silences.</p><p>You try to talk to him, you ask him to be kinder, softer, and he says he didn't notice. He says he's just been stressed.</p><p>You don't ask him again.</p><p>//</p><p>Eddie's death is something surreal, something scary and unnatural and strange, a thing you can't completely understand.</p><p>Your place, your's and Eddie's, is empty, unrecognisable, changed with fear and history and madness, Eddie's figure, transfigured by time and death and everything absent, linger in the corners.</p><p>There are no sounds from the second floor, no howling laughs at the tv set, no feet hurying down the stairs. There are no grumpy calls of your name or scattered cornflakes, wet and sticky, on the counter. There is no life. You try to keep on, go about your day, but there is no real presence, and as much as you dreaded your life married to Eddie, having him disappear to a place you cannot go, makes you feel even worse.</p><p>You spend the first night mourning him fitfully and noisily, all alone in your too-big of a bed, though your tears are not yet completely felt, as if you don't actually believe he is dead. It gets through to you a little by the time you're standing by Judy, hands shaking and breath coming in painful and you're watching his dark shadow through the mirror, light-headed from fear and lack of sleep.</p><p>Judy has you standing next to her, though you did a fair share of protesting.</p><p>"I couldn't." You'd said.</p><p>"You're family." She insisted.</p><p>You stand next to her and you have to smile gratefully into Eddie's friend's faces, hear them sniff audibly, have them squeeze hands, listen to people of all colours and ages tell you what a wonderful young man he was, and how much he loved you.</p><p>You think about your last talk, about the way he said that nasty word right into your face, a thing he's never done before. You think about how he flung himself out of the car, in haste to get away from you.</p><p>You think about his anger and twisted mouth and burning eyes and you disgrace yourself by crying too much and too loud and lashing out on the mirror, where Eddie is but nobody can see him.</p><p>After, you realise that you can't stay in your home. It feels empty and scary and you can't shake the feeling as though you're intruding, as though you've broken into someone else's privecy without asking, as though you're abserving an intimate scene through a knothole in the wall, even if it's a scene of complete absence.</p><p>As the days pass it gets worse, it gets unbearable, so you pack a suitcase. The sunset is red, reddish-purple, and rising. It drifts in the sky, shadows changing without help, unintreupted air, absence of defining borders, the only break an occasional distant plane, vapor streak, for all the people walking up and down the street, it must be like living in a hammock.</p><p>So you pack a suitcase. You find it hard, with the new presence of the dark ghost just behind you shoulder, just outside your reach, but you do it anyway. Silky skirts the colour of olives, velvet jackets, dangly gold earrings, and your personal bottle of perfume. You take your shoes, one pair of boots, some jeans and sneakers, your favourite blouses and fluffy sweaters, slowly twirling them around, stuffing underpants and bras in a huge backpack, waltzing around the house for things you cannot part with.</p><p>There aren't many things you want to take. Everything reminds you of Eddie, which in turn reminds you of a dark figure with blinding white eyes, someone who shouldn't exist but somehow does, standing tall and solemn behind the mirror, with bloodied fingers and dark expression and a broken watch and hands you are too familiar with not to recognise.</p><p>You walk around and scavenge for materialistic little things and Eddie's shadow is watching you from behind the curtain. Every time you glance at a mirror, or a reflective surface, you meet his blinding new stare, headlights, and electric hate, a gaze you cannot see the familiar eyes behind. Even when your head is turned, you can feel him tracing you.</p><p>It's hard to concentrate when you're bug-headed on things that aren't there, your mined zapping around like a mechanical mouse. It takes a lot of energy just to call a taxi, resisting the mirror right beside the small staircase upstairs.</p><p>He isn't real, you tell yourself as you pull on your denim jacket and check one last time to ground floor.</p><p>Despite this fact, chills run through your body.</p><p>Judy stops you at the door and you almost choke with fear. When she leaves, you take a moment and breathe slowly through your nose.</p><p>You don't glance into mirrors on your way out.</p><p>//</p><p>Your plan is good. Solid. You have enough money for safe traveling, and you've always wanted to see the world. Principle Oyelowo looks disappointed when you place your resignation, but he is a true educator and he wishes you well. He thinks he knows why you're leaving and he doesn't push and doesn't pry. He squeezes your small hand in his big warm palm and says he has never met anyone quite like you.</p><p>Besides principle Oyelowo, you don't tell anyone about your plan. It's the weekend and your mother won't bother checking up on you until late on Monday. Judy will call, of course, but you have disconnected the phone. If she decides to visit, she'll find the note and your scrambled apology. She will be sad and disappointed but you hope she wouldn't blame you for leaving.</p><p>You want to tell Eddie, but he isn't there. You want to tell him you've made it. You arranged for it and you went for it, all on your own. You want to tell Eddie about the plane ticket and the suitcase and the plan. You want to see his face, ever judging, a fond smile on his lips, as if fearing you cannot plan your way across the room and out the door, let alone across the ocean, will nod and tell you he's proud of you.</p><p>You want to tell your mother that you've done something complicated and dangerous without making a single mistake. You have always wanted to do something she's admire.</p><p>There isn't any more an Eddie you can talk to (the scary shadow behind your back is a poor replacement for your friend) and you know your mother probably wouldn't be happy with your decision. She'd sigh and sip on her wine and think you're not cut out for this. She would say something firm and defiant and she'd shut any challenge that would rise in your eyes, any remark of yours will be swiped to the side. You'd just be bitter and sad.</p><p>Besides, you tell yourself as you settle into the narrow seat, the one farthest from the window, your mother wouldn't have understood. She wouldn't have been able to understand in the least the desire, the pure quintessential need of your escape, a thing you yourself understood only too well.</p><p>Life with Eddie was hard, life as an elementary school teacher was hard, living in a small town was hard, but in your mother's opinion, hard is something to overcome, something to muster. Something to hide. Your mother's life has been hard and she fought back the best she could. She collapsed into wine bottles and too many men and she got on the other side, somehow.</p><p>She thinks you're running away. She thinks you gave up. But escape isn't a luxury for you. It's a necessity. You have to get it somehow. And even though you're tired and scared and pursued by past ghosts, by things you don't quite understand, you have to do it.</p><p>So, you don't tell her. For all sorts of reasons.</p><p>//</p><p>You dream.</p><p>In your dream, your body is electric, sparking and unnatural and heated, a twisting pleasure running through your veins, mixing in your blood and you feel like you've been running a marathon, you're panting hard.</p><p>In your dream, hot pulses of eagerness threading beneath your skin, hoisting any nightmares aside.</p><p>In your dreams, the woman with the curly hair and the heated stare is by your side, her eyes stormy, her lips parted. She's talking, and her voice is hoarse like she's been screaming. She says your name, trims letters and words with reckless disregard, strange version of the English language, though, in your sleep, you're not sure it's English you are speaking.</p><p>You wake up before you can ask her her name.</p><p>You wake up with your thighs sick and fingers trembling, your whole body shaking. You wake up with ragged breath on your lips, a hopeless sound low in your chest and you roll your hips against nothing, still in the grasp of sleep, not awake but not sleeping, somewhere in between where the desire makes you slip your fingers past your waistband, make contact.</p><p>Your eyes roll back as you fill yourself, too hot and too sensitive and too fast.</p><p>//</p><p>For a while, all you want is to stand in the middle of a street, in front of everyone, and shriek as loud as you can, about hatred and love and rage and despair, scream at the top of your lungs and have it come out as music.</p><p>You don't do it.</p><p>Instead, you buy postcards and send them to Judy and to your mother, with short apologetic sentences that don't mean much. You call home, once you find a pay-phone. You do it only once because long-distance calls are expensive, and your mother doesn't pick up the phone anyway.</p><p>You miss the fourth graders and your daily routine.</p><p>You don't miss Eddie, which adds to the guilt weighing you down and makes his bloodied dark image in the mirror, right behind your shoulder, a much more frightening thing than you'd like for him to be.</p><p>You settle in your bus seat, your eyes still swollen and you are numb and depressed, on your way to a place you've never seen before. You think about Eddie and how he wanted you, gallant but futile. You think about how he was your best friend. You think about how you should miss him, but you don't.</p><p>You think sullenly, as you stare out the window, drinking blindly the green landscape, what your life would have looked like if Eddie was still alive. You'd probably be married already, ironing his boxer shorts and eating Judy's Sunday meal after church (something you always disliked, god being an alien thing, ribs sticking out, face twisted and tortured, mysterious to you). You would pretend to be grateful and happy and you wouldn't be able to escape or travel.</p><p>You think you loved him, as the bus takes a sharp turn, tilting dangerously to the side, sliding on wet road. You think you loved him, but you were never <i>in love</i> with him and the thought of a life long pretence makes you squirm, though you know that will never happen now.</p><p>//</p><p>Traveling through Europe is a new and exciting experience and you learn people are eager to help, unlike Eddie's dark premonitions and your mother's angry remarks. You ask for help, and old men and middle-aged women and children with sun-kissed skin drop their work and their laundry and their games and guide you happily around, chatting in languages you cannot understand, smiling big care-free smiles.</p><p>You don't like cars or driving, even though you know-how, so you figured early on you won't be needing rentals. Instead, you take trains and buses and expensive taxis. On huge freeways, people are steering cars as if they are horses, in a way you've never seen before, nothing like driving back home. There's a newfound freedom in Spain, a revolutionary happiness in France, a hovering kind of slumber in Italy. The roads are free and people treat them like an insult, going fifty over the speed limit, wild and unafraid. You adimre this and you're happy you're not driving.</p><p>Europe is beautiful, amazingly different from Iowa, and the midwestern landscapes you've always thought of as home. Towns are strawn around the highways, and big cities emerging from the distance, like fantasy beasts of marble and stone.</p><p>Rome is sunny and Barcelona smells like freedom and Paris and Stockholm are holding secrets in every corner, streets are packed and grey and absolutely charming.</p><p>You can't read the newspapers in most of the places you are visiting, so the disasters of the landscapes you're moving through are invisible to you and so you float, despite Eddie's lingering shadow behind mirrors and reflective surfaces, despite your mother's stubborn silence, despite knowing this all is just a very elaborate holiday, a very pleasant dream.</p><p>You float along serenely as though a movie travelog, the sky is blue and light golden, huge blockish apartment buildings lining the roads, their balconies festooned with washing or plants, and you cannot guess what kind of life is going inside them.</p><p>You are deaf and dumb and smiling, bouncing excitedly, drinking eagerly Istanbul and Prague and Vienna.</p><p>You walk as if weighting nothing, light as a dancer, and all this time you can feel Eddie by your side, just outside your reach, but present nonetheless. You feel him beside you, real as a touch. Like you're holding his hand.</p><p>Your feet hurt by his stubborn presence, but you go round and round, through museums and streets, on tours through fountains. You circle huge buildings and cement stairs, pillars and marble lions and bridges that are a work of art. Ancient and silent and patient. You marvel at Athens, at Berlin, at Madrid. You trip more than a couple of times in Budapest, you spend too much money in Nice, you eat too much ice cream in Krakow.</p><p>Everything you've ever known is across the ocean, on a beach, or in a classroom, or in an old red house with a white door. In a cemetery, buried deep in the ground.<br/>
You are moving, ever-increasing in speed, away from it all. You are moving and you don't think to stop, not for a moment.</p><p>//</p><p>When you left America, you had no plan. You had a suitcase and a red backpack. The suitcase contained the few clothes that you had, skirts and blouses and some pants. You had some personal belongings you couldn't part with, and Eddie's broken, cursed glasses, thrust into your palm by a broken-hearted mother.</p><p>You traveled through countries and entertained the idea of staying, but no place called your name and you kept touristing, enjoying all the new things this kind of life has to offer.</p><p>When you arrive in London, it's early morning and chilly and you fall a little in love with the grey streets and the grey sky and the grey people all around you, stern and tired and somehow still full of life.</p><p>You find a motel, where they don't ask questions and change sheets and towels and offer two meals a day. Your room is a two bed one sofa no tv kind of a room, but they charge less than you've expected, and you're too tired to find it anything but completely suitable.</p><p>The motel is not a very nice one, but not too shabby and it smells like chlorine and furniture polish with undercutting smell that you think is vomit, or garbage. Something unplesent but unseen.</p><p>You don't have no one to talk to, now that you're across the ocean from the people you know and Eddie is dead, so you go to museums and art galleries, places you can walk around alone and look. You take bus trips. You go places via the underground and it is like traveling through purple plush. You keep expecting to see footstools and old cracks. All you see is tiles and traveling bathrooms and you love it. You are free being yourself, but you're not sure who you are and every time your eyes land on a pretty woman, a young dark-skinned girl or a black-eyed immigrant, or a red-headed english lady, you feel Eddie's presence right beside you and your smile would waver.</p><p>They look at you, those women with eyes the colour of rainbows, with smiles too easy to please, and you look back, but you're always the first to turn away your gaze so they leave you alone, deem you too much of a trouble to approach. Not interesting enough to fight for an opening.</p><p>You don't blame them.</p><p>You do wonder what you're going to do next. You're not ready to go back home yet, even after almost five months of traveling, but you don't have enough money to keep living as you do now. It's time to craft a plan.</p><p>As you think, you eat things you didn't normally eat back home. London doesn't offer hamburgers or hot dogs, and you don't want it to. Instead, you eat fish and chips, eggs, sausages and mash. You drink some tea but you don't like it very much so you just get a nice diet coke, a fairly new product you found yourself drinking religiously between classes, tucked away in the teacher's lounge.</p><p>You travel outside London as well, but you enjoy the huge city, something adjustable and amazing. You look at historical buildings, inspect churches, spend money on postcards you send to your mum. You read a lot of books, cheap paperbacks that crumble under your fingers, in bed under the covers, when it's too cold to wander around.</p><p>You cover all your mirrors.</p><p>You don't miss Eddie.</p><p>//</p><p>There is a shivering lady on the street and you kneel beside her and put your arm around her shoulder.</p><p>"Are you okay? Do you need help getting up?"</p><p>She reeks of stale sweat and cheap alcohol but she smiles gratefully and lets you hoist her up. She can't be older than forty, though her skin is crispy and cracked and the sick colour of popping veins.</p><p>"God bless ya." She croaks.</p><p>"Here," you press a couple of coins into her palm. "Get yourself a nice cup of tea?"</p><p>She cries silently into her cupped palms and you're feeling idiotic when you let her go on her way.</p><p>"Shouldn't have done that, love. She'll just get high and spend you' money on dope." Says a young man in light trousers and a dark jacket as he walks past.</p><p>"I don't care." You spit bitterly back and he flips you off.</p><p>You're the kind of person who empathize with anything in pain. You buy pencils from legless veterans in street corners, and you give coins to lying children who tell you they have lost their bus fare. You help old ladies across the street, and upon the sidewalk when they fall down, mortified by their own weakness. You scoop cats hit by passing cars and take them to a local vet, you listen and smile politely at men in the subway when they weep about their drunken misfortunes, you feel a fire of injustice rising in your chest when someone is losing a game or standing at the corner of a play-yard or being picked last.</p><p>This is how you're wired, simple and true, without an agenda behind it. Maybe it's because you were an unhappy kid, before Eddie and his mother and his loud loud (happy) brothers. Maybe it's because you were brought up clenching teeth and crying, loudly but only in your head, about your own misfortunes – the sort of crying you stifle and keep hushed, so hushed you almost forget about them yourself.</p><p>You're also very neatly polite, smiley and easy going and friendly, even when the person across from you just gives you a dirty look in return. You don't think about it much until you arrive in England.</p><p>"Where you from, love?" asks a red-faced man in a pub, where you're drinking dark coloured beer in a huge heavy glass, searching the guide book, marking some spots you want to visit on the weekend.</p><p>London is never-ending, exciting, and dark, though not too dark for you to want to leave. You spend days in libraries and visit the Victoria and Albert Museum, breathing in the smell of age and polished wood and the dry, sardonic odour of custodians, studying the glass cases and the collections of drawings.</p><p>You lift your head and smile at him, cozy and friendly and confident. You're twenty nine and an american in a foreign country.</p><p>"Iowa," you say simply. "America".</p><p>"Thought I recognised that accent from somewhere." He beams at you, proud of himself, slightly swaying in his high stool.</p><p>You keep your smile wide and steady. "Mh-hmm".</p><p>"Not many of you Yankees around here, eh?" he takes a huge swing of his beer and his voice doesn't carry a mean sound. "Not half of those who are as polite as you, love".</p><p>"Thank you," you say, suddenly very aware of your slight drawl, the way you arrange words in your mouth, how you can't walk past a slightly smiling stranger without smiling back.</p><p>"Midwestern charm," the man says. "Can't escape it, eh?"</p><p>You only think it's right to be polite.</p><p>A skinny young man with red cheeks and a big round nose steps in between you and your burly beer-scented acquaintance.</p><p>"Tryin' to molest yer, was he, love?"</p><p>"No, no." You answer briskly. "It's okay. Thank you".</p><p>The well-meaning drunk with the red face smiles awkwardly at you.  "I mean no harm, dear".</p><p>You smile back.</p><p>"They, all the same, these bastards. Young and cocky and so bloody full o' themselves. You shouldn't be sittin' alone at a pub, love," he looks at you sharply with one good eye. The other, you notice, is a little out of focus. His head lolls to the side, like a big red bird. He seems to expect a reply.</p><p>"It's temporary," you smile as broadly as you can manage. "I'm looking for a job".</p><p>"Bah!" he says irritably. "Not in this fuckin' mess of a town. Look for a good place outside o' London. Something far away. In a green country-side, eh?"</p><p>Five minutes later he wipes his mouth on the back of his brown sleeve and leaves. You doubt his advice, but when you go back to your crumpled little room, you find yourself searching the ads in the newspaper you bought this morning, anyway.</p><p>There are a couple of possitions you've already marked, places you think you'd fit nicely into, all of them in London and not far away from your current motel. You're about to copy the information on a sheet of yellowish paper, in order to secure at least a couple of interviews for Monday, when your gaze falls upon a certain ad you've been seeing for the last six months, simple and sweet and well-written, and you think back to your pub conversation. You doubt the drunk man's advice, but strangely enough you circle the ad with a blue ballpoint pen and set your mind on ringing Sir Henry Wingrave's office first thing in the morning.</p><p>You have enough coins to use the payphone in the hall.</p><p>//</p><p>You carry Eddie around your neck like a rotting albatross. You dream about his death often, your angry dark-haired fiance, menacing, and cold. He's never the sweet boy you loved chasing around his backyard. He's never the handsome teenager you tried so desperatly to make yourself fall in love with, but never could. He's never the confident smiling man who said he loved you and promised to always take care of you, no matter what.</p><p>He's this silent version of himself, dark and bloodied and violently quiet. He doesn't talk, just stares behind bright glasses, blinding lights for a hot angry stare, his dark eyes nowhere to be found.</p><p>Sometimes you see him in too polished dishes, in uncovered mirrors, in car windows, darken and fast. Sometimes he sits in front of you, sometimes he has his hand on your shoulder, sometimes there are bloody tears running down his cheeks.</p><p>He never laughs and never smiles and never talks. He never calls your name.</p><p>In your worst dreams, you can't see him at all. He's hiding behind a door or standing in front of one, his back turned to you. You are locked in in a small room, in a closet, in a celler, in a tiny bathroom. You can't see him but you can hear voices. It's Eddie's but it sounds like a thousand voices and you can't distinguish what they're saying. They are talking to you, about you, accusing you of not loving him enough, of not loving him right, of being different and sick and unnatural.</p><p>You listen and you realise that something bad is going to happen.</p><p>In some of your dreams, there is a tiny framed figure, the young woman you can't stop dreaming about, muscular and thin, with a bright smile and a street-wise approach. When you're completely helpless, surrounded by Eddie's hundred voices, she puts her hand on your shoulder, shielding the darkness with her small body, and she smiles a good smile, her bright eyes a colour you can't see.</p><p>"S'alright," she says in a foreign accent you must have heard somewhere before. She calls you a name that isn't yours and when you wake up, you can't remember her voice or her face or the pet name she gave you.</p><p>You wake up when you hear footsteps, coming up the empty motel hall. You press your arms into yourself, you clench your jaw.</p><p>You press your fingers into your eyes, hard, to make the pool of blackness ringed with violent colour. Release, ted spreading back in, abrupt as pain. The grumpy smiling woman in your dreams knows about your secret, that much is clear. It had never been a secret, you'd made it one because it was easier.</p><p>You open your eyes.</p><p>You don't sleep well after these sorts of dreams. You fail to understand why Eddie would frighten you so much, but he does and he hangs around you like a mist, like a phantom moon, like a too thick of a shadow no light in the world could vanish. There is no prose breathing reason behind it. No explanation.</p><p>People, you've been raised to believe, are not onions. There are no possible ghosts. There is no resurrection. There is reason and there is nature and people – they stay under. And yet here is Eddie, dead and solid and present, ever so present, watching you behind blinding headlights, eyes that are no longer human, but an imprint of his last moments alive.</p><p>You want to forget the past, to forget the frightening thing that your best friend had become, but it refuses to forget you. it clings, oily and scary and mean and you wait for sleep, which doesn't come.</p><p>//</p><p>The secretary is nice and polite when you call Henry Wingrave's office and you are jittery by the time you have to leave for your interview, on Tuesday afternoon.</p><p>You make sure to wear your best outfit, a dark suit and a light blouse, and you go out with a map of the district and Wingrave's office marked with a small red X on it. You also take the note on which you wrote his address and phone number and you don't feel too awful, making your hurrid way down the street after emerging from the ground.</p><p>Henry Wingrave is impressive in his dark blue suit and he has something depressed about him. He pours so much brandy in his teacup, back turned to you, and you are left wondering how fast is he going to fall asleep, and when the annoyed expression will fall off his face.</p><p>(It doesn't, right until the moment you bite back an angry reply and watch his eyes come to life).</p><p>People have the tendency to dismiss you, condescend, and laugh behind your back. You think it might be the lethal combination of your blonde fluffy hair and your big blue eyes and your cursed inability to stop smiling.</p><p>Wingrave regards you with a cocky half-smile and makes the same mistake so many men have made before him. He talks over you, and you're getting more and more annoyed by the minute.</p><p>You can't help wondering if he set this interview simply to unwind, to spice his daily routine, to bite sarcastic remarks on someone other than his saint of a secretary.</p><p>You press your lips together and smile and nod and pretend you don't have a rising urge to punch him in the nose (something you have never done before, and something you will never do, but the angry little fantasy is there and you let it sit hot and ready in your chest, a secret among so many others).</p><p>People, you know, have the tendency to misjudge you, and while you let kids get away with small tortures, and learn and grow in their own ways, men who tower over you and treat you as a silly child with an empty head are something you refuse to tolerate. You are more than happy to land a helping hand and to bite your tongue and to give people the benefit of the doubt, but you have never allowed others to mistreat you or to treat you as a dumb little loser. Not since your mother decided it was best to stop trying and mold you after her own image.</p><p>Henry Wingrave doesn't care what you have to say. He sighs when you talk and barely resists to roll his eyes and he isn't even bothering to look at you when you try to engage in what feels like a one-sided conversation.</p><p>You are a little hurt but you also feel set free, released from the need to impress him. You are no longer compelled to do service. On the outside you keep your back straight and your head cocked slightly to the side, you keep your eyes on the man in the blue suit and you make sure to school your features into something that you hope isn't a disapproving scowl.</p><p>On another, more secret level, the need to be likable slips away and the need to serve him a taste of his own medicine spreads out before you, unrolling like dark fabric. You know you're about to lose this opportunity, but if you're being fair with yourself, you knew you had little chance of securing it anyway.</p><p>"What's the catch?" Wingrave asks, eyes clever and mean and shining with something that isn't exactly anger. He is tired, you can tell. Tired and exhausted and on the verge of a tantrum.</p><p>"I'm sorry?" You make one last attempt at staying professional, civilized at least, though there is a roaring rush of blood in your ears and you are far from being calm, pulse raising, beating at the back of your thighs.</p><p>Behind Henry Wingrave's back, the sky is watercolour blue and the clouds are bunching white and fluffy, grey on the bottom. Wind is moving the tree-tops. It's the nicest weather London had seen in a while and you think you might go to Hyde Park and enjoy it while it lasts.</p><p>"The catch," he clarified, not in the least awkward. "You are what? Thirty? Mid-twenties? I wonder, what's the catch".</p><p>Henry Wingrave is one of those men who are more vultures than human beings. The types who value beautiful things from a distance, who have limited choises of food or slaves or corpses, who the only relation they could have to a thing they like is to destroy it, and you're tired and angry and hurt.</p><p>"Seems odd, to me".</p><p>You feel dizzy, too much anger and not enough air in the big posh office. The skin on your face shimmering as though burned, afterglow. You don't know why the blush rises in your cheeks. You are chilly and sad and the failure of this interview is unbearable.</p><p>"Seems odd to me, too. The listing, I mean – " and once you start, you can't seem to stop. You jab the words like little knives, twisting them into his smug face, cutting and cruel and meaningless.</p><p> Henry Wingraves sips on his tea, an amused expression tugging at his carefully schooled face. He is watching you, careful and calculating, and when you're done, slightly flushed and very annoyed, he squeezes your hand and says his secretary will be in touch.</p><p> Your hands tremble, but you make sure to return a strong handshake. </p><p>//</p><p>You leave Henry Wingrave's office, knowing you haven't got the job, knowing your mouth got you into trouble, like it sometimes happened when you were small. You order a light beer in the pub across the street and survey the wanted page in the newspaper that lies on the bar, circling relevant ads with the bartender's borrowed pen.</p><p>You chew on your fingernails while you read, sipping from time to time on an Irish beer. You chew so hard you move to the flesh around the nails. Your fingers are stippled with tiny wounds, like a nervous addict, painful and stinging. Your teeth slip on skin, cut, and then cut deeper, and when you raise your eyes from the wanted section, Henry Wingrave is sitting right in front of you, miserable and sad and exhausted.</p><p>The pub is filled with noise and your head is buzzing. You fight for a couple of minutes the urge to approach him, then you ask the bartender for a glass of whiskey and thrust it under Wingrave's nose.</p><p>"I think we should toast to it, mr. Wingrave." You say with much more confidence than you feel.</p><p>You sit next to him. He's obscure beside you, inert, comforting as a log. He talks when he drink and you sit next to him and listen. He doesn't look as mean as he did back in his office. There is nothing complicated in the way he talks, nothing like a barrier of ranks.</p><p>"You can tell me now," you say when there is a lull in the conversation. "I'm honestly so so curious".</p><p>He looks at you as if he doesn't understand what you're talking about.</p><p>"The catch." You clarify. Your midwestern accent is heavier, two beers in. Sharp and obvious even to your own ears.</p><p>He laughs, awkward and guarded and you almost hit him on the arm.</p><p>"No, c'mon!"</p><p>By the time he tells you the story, a little guarded and a little self-conscious, your ears are filled with moving air, your face is on fire and you breathe in the sharp smell of sweat and alcohol. You have downed two huge glasses of beer and Henry Wingrave's looking gradually more relaxed after going through at least three different drinks, ending up with a guiness and with a loose tie, his jacket drapped over the back of his stool and your blouse is a little disheveled. You listen to him talk about his niece and nephew, about small town superstition, about a dead governess, and you find it easy enough to talk to him.</p><p>"What about you? What was your catch?"</p><p>For a moment you think about answering truthfully, but it's not a story for tonight, and not a story for Henry Wingrave and not a story you want to revisit until absolutely necessary, so you take a deep breath and say:</p><p>"I just couldn't be home anymore".</p><p>It seems like it was the right thing to say, because Henry's got a sympathetic look on his shiny face, like he knows what it feels like.</p><p>You talk and he nods and you find the beginning of hope in his tipsy awkwardness, in his clumsy replies. It's so easy, just sitting there, drinking, and unwinding to a man you thought wasn't capable of listening, and you are truly surprised when he offers you a trial position.</p><p>You say yes without a second's thought.</p><p>He shakes your hand in a slightly sweaty palm.</p><p>"I'll call the house tomorrow, first thing in the morning," he says in his posh accent as he buttons up his jacket and glancing both sides, outside the now-closed pub. It's dark outside, almost midnight.</p><p>"Will the day after tomorrow be suitable, miss Clayton? Or would you prefer the rest of the week to – "</p><p>"Thursday will be perfect, thank you so much." You say, too eager and too loud and too American in the middle of London's dark streets.</p><p>Henry Wingrave smiles as though he cannot believe his own luck. He offers to drive you home, chivalry at its finest, and he shakes your hand again when you climb out of his car, light-headed and slightly nauseous.</p><p>You count the coins in your denim jacket pocket when you close the door behind you and decide you'd call your mother tomorrw afternoon. She won't be happy to hear your news, but you've already accepted Henry Wingrave's offer and your mother's disappointment is something you've made amends with a long time ago.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Everything is exactly as you thought it would be, nothing like you feared (nothing like your mother warned you about over the phone, already drunk and probably frowning).</p><p>The man Henry Wingrave send to pick you up is a smiling, handsome, broad-shouldered guy who introduces himself as Owen and who lifts your bags with a friendly smile and an easy manner. He steers the car in comfortable silence out of London's traffic to a rural looking road; a slightly curved scar packed with trucks and semi-trailers carrying wet cement and cut wood and loud chickens.</p><p>Owen lets you pass out on the back seat without so much as a word, quietly flashing you a white-teethed smile under an impressively large mustache, murmuring something you're already too far gone to decipher. You sleep, twisting on the red leather, and the thunder that's been bumping and stumbling in the distance is a sullen God gathering his heavenly troops in a land of fairy tales and endless possibilities.</p><p>When you're jostled back to wakefulness, Owen is charming and funny and gentle and you think it's going to be easy, having him for the company at this mysterious new place you're headed to, far away from everything you've grown used to in the past six months.</p><p>Owen is simple as a hand, kind and real, like the boys you grew up around most of your life. He tells you enthusiastically about Paris, where he lived for a couple of years, working as a sue-chef, and he grumbles with obvious dislike about Bly ("<i>the town, not the manor</i>"), complicated and tangled, and you smile at his ear, the only feature of him you can see clearly from your place at the back seat.</p><p>(You understand this kind of sulkiness. You've never liked your home, either).</p><p>Outside the car (a sharp-finned and stripped with chrome lumbering monster, leftover from ten or twenty years ago) the trees are cool green. You can see the stumps with charcoal crust on them, scabby and crippled, survivors, of an old disaster.</p><p>The sights flowing ahead of you over the ground, fast and fleeting, your eyes filtering the shapes and forms of England. It springs up from the earth as far as you can see; pure joy, pure death, burning white like snow. A thing you've never known but Owen seems used to.</p><p>The roads here aren't paved and they curve in all directions. Owen says he isn't a good driver but he's doing one hell of a job just keeping the car going. The road is dirt, mostly, full of bumps and potholes and it follows the way the land is going, up and down the hills and around cliffs and boulders, green and beautiful and fresh, nothing like you've ever seen before.</p><p>"It's gorgeous!" You say softly as you lean forward and put your elbows on the seat in front of you, just by Owen's shoulder.</p><p>Owen scowls at the curving road ahead of him, irritated and sad, not making eye-contact. You can see his jaw clenching and unclenching.</p><p>"Is it?" He says, and you notice there isn't real fury behind the hatred for his surroundings, for this green paradise, for this remote garden of Eden, just infinite sadness, unbearable bitterness, like a tired man knowing there is no other place on earth fitted better for him.</p><p>Your throat constricts. "What!"</p><p>"Ugh. I can't tell anymore, personally".</p><p>The road is billowing along at the distance through the trees and it makes you want to step out of the jostling car and inhale the English country-side deep into your lungs. The smell of dust fuming behind and around you and mixes with the gas and upholstery smell of the car.</p><p>"The village is right behind a curve," Owen says, somewhat sorrowfully, as two roads join and widen past the flat cliff.</p><p>Owen steers the car toward the cliff. The sun slops, it's morning still, but the light is not yellow. It's clear white. Overhead there are fluffy clouds and a plane, so far up you can hardly hear it, threading cities and countries together with its trail of smoke. An X in the sky.</p><p>"I've actually never liked Bly," he's talking to you but keeps his eyes fixed on the road, both hands on the steering wheel. "The people here, most of them, they're born here, they die here. Whole town's one big gravity well. It's easy to get stuck".</p><p>You know the feeling, even if you can't sympathise with the sentiment for what looks like the best place on planet earth.</p><p>You say, "Well, there are worse places to be stuck, believe me".</p><p>Owen nods. You heave a sigh.</p><p>There is a curve in the road and you breathe a low "God".</p><p>As soon as you get a glimpse at the huge old manor, you sense the power. It's in your hands and running along your arms. You scan the scene unfolding, walls and windows emerging from between the trees, right behind a curve.</p><p>"Is that – ?" you almost choke on a gasp.</p><p>Owen lets out a breathy laugh. It's a flat sound, threaded with little to no humor.</p><p>"Like I said," he mimics someone you don't know, his voice rising and falling comically. "Plenty to love".</p><p>//</p><p>The house is brownish-red brick, with the large many paned windows of a truly old architecture, a thing meant to save lighting. It's huge. Enormous. Rightfully royal, and it stands in the distance, as quiet and graceful as manors go. There are stone parapets and a roof you can't see the colour of, coated in dust and vegetation with too many chimneys rising up to the sky.</p><p>You feel like flying when you step out of the car and wave to Owen a quick goodbye.</p><p>"Please don’t get lost out here, miss Clayton," he has a sad expression on his face like people have been vanishing around here far too many times for him not to warn you. His lips are pressed together under his black mustache and he's leaning out of the driver's window. "The children will be so devastated".</p><p>You laugh and promise him not to take too long wandering around. He nods and drives away.</p><p>The trail hadn't been brushed out recently but there are deep footprints, bootprints, in the muddy places. Two sets and they point in but not out. You think that whoever they belong to, they must be somewhere nearby.</p><p>Your fist clenches by itself, thumb crushed inside. You squeeze your thumb with trembling fingers, with something like the tingling start of a panic attack.</p><p>Your body is stiff after the long drive. Your muscles hurt from sleeping seated and with the new effort of walking. Your body stumbles once or twice, not used to the soft ground of the country-side. It feels like learning to walk after a long illness.</p><p>You shoulder your red backpack. It's heavy and the straps cut into your shoulders. You lean against the weight, feet squishing in the wet mud as you walk.</p><p>(Not so bad, definitely not very good).</p><p>The first view of the lake, which you see after almost half an hour of walking, is gorgeous. Blue and cool like redemption, and tears sting your eyes.</p><p>You unclose your tight fist, releasing. It becomes a hand again, palm a network of trails, lifelines, past and present and future. Your fingers are stiff and you flex them a couple of times; squeezing and releasing and squeezing again, an exercise you used to perform for your fourth graders at reasonable intervals.</p><p>There is a small girl sitting on her knees, right at the edge of the water, hunched over what you think must be her doll. She's humming a tune you don't recognise, something dark and thin like a paper cut. You wonder if the girl is real. You're afraid that if you'll blink she will vanish.</p><p>"What a beautiful song!" You call out.</p><p>"What song?" She turns her head quickly and looks at you, past you, as though she knows something is there behind your shoulder but she can't quite see it. The birds cry somewhere from the trees around the lake, cawing, and a gentle wave erupts the peaceful surface of the lake.</p><p>You hope against all hope that's Eddie's dark phantom isn't peering at the girl behind you.</p><p>"The one you were just singing".</p><p>"You're miss Clayton!" The girl exclaims. She scrambles to her feet and runs to you. "You must be! Oh, and you're so pretty! I told Miles you'd be pretty! How perfectly splendid!"</p><p>You can't help but smile. "You must be Flora".</p><p>Flora Wingrave is a sweet little thing with a childish wonder and a wavering attention. She talks loud and excited and more than once, she pretends she doesn't understand what you're talking about.</p><p>Because you're used to selective hearing in kids, you let it slide. She's a small little creature, cute and fairy-like with her brown wavy hair and big bright eyes and when she grabs your hands in her cold fingers and steers you away from the lake, sighing and talking as fast as humanly possible, you think you're going to enjoy your stay at Bly.</p><p>//</p><p>You walk together up and over a ridge hill, then down through a grove to a small clearing. The leaves under your feet are damp from the dew, or maybe it's the lake, soaking up through the rock and sand. Flora is chatting the whole way down, something about how excited and how impatient and how anxious they all were this morning after Owen left.</p><p>(Apparently, someone named Jamie was wondering out loud at the breakfast table what will happen if the new au pair got one look at Flora and fled to the hills, and though Flora reassures you she knows it was a joke, and a very clever one, she says she couldn't shake the feeling it might come true).</p><p>You laugh, delighted by your small bubbly guide.</p><p>"Are you, miss Clayton?" Flora tugs lightly at your hand, the one she holds firmly in her small palm.</p><p>"Am I what?"</p><p>"Going to flee for the hills?"</p><p>You laugh again, but you make sure to look her in the eyes when you say. "Well, at least not yet".</p><p>When you enter the clearing, there are two figures there, a woman, in a red conservative sweater and a long skirt, bent over a well, and a boy, small and clad in smart clothes, standing at a distance, frowning at the woman's back. They both look like characters from a movie scene. Something not exactly from this earth.</p><p>"Miles!" Flora calls, out of breath and excited. "She's here!"</p><p>"This is her!" The boy steps aside and forces a smile on his face. The smile is flat and doesn't reach his eyes.</p><p>"Hi, Miles!"</p><p>Miles is a charming little gentleman in warm clothes and with good manners. He's slightly older than Flora and there is something unsettling about the way he looks at you, the way he grabs your outstretched hand and bends down to kiss your knuckles, like someone much older and much wiser and much more powerful than his soft exterior would suggest. There is a strange look behind his blue eyes; impatient, redundant. His stare ache like history.</p><p>"And this must be Mrs. Grose!" You say with enthusiasm to a woman who stands just a little away, hunched over an opening in the ground, completely ignoring the round of introductions around her. She is shaking; fear or tensed flesh or the cold.</p><p>At the sound of your voice, Mrs. Grose straightens and watches you like your something out of this world, not exactly human but not foreign enough to raise alarm. Her dark eyes glint, her face is blank and confused.</p><p>"Sorry," she says and smooths her palm over the back of her shaved head. Her lips quiver in a tensed smile. "Um, goodness. I was – I was miles away," she takes a step forward, still guarded but much brighter now.</p><p>"I'm Dany," you supply and extend your hand for a shake.</p><p>"Oh," she coos. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Hannah Grose".</p><p>You know she doesn't recognise you but she deducts who you must be and you smile at her because you cannot do anything but smile. She's very gentle and very elegant and she clasps her hands in front of her like a priest of a porcelain mandarin, and she asks about your journey, genuine concern coating her words. Her smile is plump, contented, stretching her full lips in a warm way.</p><p>"Well, I see you made it in one piece. Was the journey okay?"</p><p>"Oh, it was perfect!"</p><p>"Wonderful!"</p><p>Hannah Grose is a very pretty woman, with her dark skin and her shaved head and a single golden cross resting against her chest, twisting her into something royal, like an ancient biblical queen, and you feel an embarrassing need to drop on your knees and worship her. She smiles and inquires gently about your travels, she pushes softly at your impression of Owen, and you find it's easy to talk to her, to smile and laugh and exchange little pleasantries as you make your way into the house.</p><p>//</p><p>The house, a huge and ancient manor, is dark and welcoming and it dwarfs all the things around it. It's enormous, monumental even, and it controls the lake and the beautiful gardens you saw on your way in, and all the other things on this mysterious rubbery ground, in this remote English place.</p><p>Everything is exactly as you thought it would be. Nothing like you feared (nothing like your mother warned you about over the phone, slightly drunk and scolding).</p><p>The house is big and warm, the stairs are beautiful, the paintings are impressive, old and dark and they smell slightly of the past, featuring elegant ladies gazing toward the horizon, straight spun with their shoulders back, and stern-looking gentlemen, tall and solemn-faced with mustaches and eyes-patches.</p><p>"The paintings are all original," says Flora, stretching her arms to the sides, as you walk through the corridor. "Which means they are painted by hand. And they're perfectly splendid".</p><p>The classroom is well lit, you can't see into the halls very well and Your room is big and comfortable-looking, ('<i>perfectly splendid</i>').</p><p>Despite her hearty tour of the manor, Flora has enough warnings to fill a small gothic-horror book. You smile gently at her and promise you'll join them downstairs in a short moment, after changing and freshening up a bit. Flora leaves and though your chest is heavy, you don't see anything that wields the smallest of discomforts.</p><p>Your first day is full of childish tugging hands and tiring tours around the house, old closed wings and green vast lawns, and perfectly splendid rooms. There is a statue garden, which Miles says is creepy, and more than one cellar, which Flora doesn't bother with. When the kids finally pass out, drained of power and empty as gloves, you find it hard to fall asleep, excitement and a sort of fear swirling inside your chest.</p><p>You sit in bed and leaf through a book you picked in the library on the first floor. The pages smell of dust and old secrets. It's the kind of story you like; about women and happiness and serene carved gods, blind assassins, and mythical lands, but you cannot concentrate on the words.</p><p>You go downstairs and make yourself a cup of tea. You open a can of cookies and eat two with a steaming cup of something you don't really like. The cookies are sugary and moist and wonderful and when you get back to your room, you lie down and let sleep descend your face, black oblong and dreamless.</p><p>There is no sign of Eddie in the shadows.</p><p>(You cover the mirrors anyway).</p><p>//</p><p>When you wake up, the light outside is further west and it feels late, though it isn't. There is a deep hunger in you, prompted by two delicious home-made cookies. You take a quick shower and when you cannot keep ignoring the sharp whimper in your stomach, you stumble around, scrapping your knee as you're fumbling for clothes, excited and clumsy.</p><p>The kids are easy to wake up and when you finally go down, in a collective sort of cheer, there is an impressive looking breakfast arranged on the kitchen table, pancakes and eggs and bacon and steaming tea. Owen is busy by the stove, calling a cheerful "G'morning!" over his shoulder, and Hannah greets you with a soft smile and a friendly inquiry about your first night in the house.</p><p>"Perfect," is your answer each and every time. "It's just so gorgeous here. I know I keep saying that but… there's – " you look for an answer in the air around you. "There's no other word".</p><p>Outside, the light is grey but the trees are green and after breakfast, you usher Miles and Flora outside, on a healthy walk. The air is heavy and oppressive but it gets brighter and easier to breathe as the hours pass.</p><p>The tree trunks are so much alike and there is a building terror inside of you of being too far away from the house, where the others could hear you. Then Flora puts her small hand in yours and chats happily about fish and birds and some other night, way before they ever knew you existed, when Owen stayed in the guest room and showed her the night sky, naming all the stars.</p><p>Miles says, "Did you know, miss Clayton, that if you lose direction, you can retrace your way by the location of the sun?"</p><p>"I did." You say, perky and smiling and Miles has a big proud grin on his face.</p><p>"No, you cannot!" Flora cries in a sort of panic, a sort of outrageous delight which is the product of being eight and mostly sheltered.</p><p>"Yes, you can!" Answeres Miles with a forceful shove which erupts a shriek from Flora.</p><p>You sense a fight coming, so you drop on the grass, cross your legs, and pat the space next to you for both of them to sit down. Your jeans are earth smeared and Miles looks a little uneasy, sitting on the grass in his short trousers with no barrier between him and the ground. Flora jumps with excitement, bouncing like a rubber ball on her knees, few hairs coming loose from her carefully brushed braid-tieback.</p><p>They are still teasing each other, even sitting on the grass, whispering mean little comments to one another over the barrier of your body, so you bring them back by telling them some stories about Aladdin and the magic lamp, about Ali Baba and the forty thieves, which you hope both of them will like. You tell them Sinbad the Sailor, roaming the seas, about how it feels like to fly, and eventually how easy it actually is to find your way in a forest if your know what you're looking for. You tell them about space the way you used to do with your students, and they are beyond delighted, hanging on your every word, Flora pulling against you, Miles smiling mildly his old man's smile.</p><p>It's easy, sitting on the ground with two bouncing energy balls who doesn't shy away from asking questions. It's fun and familiar having them trying to guess what glass is made of, how fast sound travels, why the dinosaurs died. It's something you can get used to, something that doesn't drain you out and you wonder, light and young and hopeful, if Bly can one day become home.</p><p>//</p><p>The house is comfortable and large and offers a romantic view of the gardens. The cool spacious halls, the polished expense of the kitchen, the fresh flowers and dried petals on the table in the front hall; everything specially designed to lure you in, homey and warm and elegant.</p><p>It's the sort of place you used to dream about when you were small. A merchant's palace, with a curved driveway leading to a stumy, almost gothic, double front doors and huge golden lamps. History is written in every corner of every room.</p><p>Bly, with its good-hearted cook and a world-weary, faintly mocking housekeeper, with two small children who don't yet know how to fully be children, is everything you could ever hope for.</p><p>Owen makes twelve-course dinners, cheese, and roast, and fish and fruits, with chocolates at the end. Hannah says it's too much, but the food is delicious and Owen's eyes glow when a collective moan of pleasure rises from the table after the first bite, so she says nothing.</p><p>Everything is pleasant. Everything is charming. Everything is absolutely gorgeous about Bly.</p><p>You watch Owen and Hannah circle each other at a safe distance, the perfect picture of desire and mutual respect, like a knight of old times and his lady. Hannah doesn't let herself get closer, for fear or self-sacrifice, you're not sure. You see the pain in her eyes when she watches him, studying him from afar, talking herself out of getting too close, and Owen lets her be patronising about his wardrobe and his silly puns, lets her bully him about his table manners and inappropriate words said too loudly right in front of Flora and Miles.</p><p>Their dance is beautiful, you think. An ancient and clever dance, dazzling and limp and it's such an alluring, such an awkward perilous dance, it makes everything about the house just slightly better.</p><p>The only thing that jitters you about Bly is the gardener; Mysterious and unseen, a name, an idea, a distant curious figure half-hidden behind a tree. She's mentioned in small conversations through the day, in the most casual of manners, her name's thrown around like a magic word.</p><p>(<i>Jamie will fix it. Jamie will know where the toolbox is. Jamie will assemble it and Jamie will finish the flower beds and Jamie and Jamie and Jamie</i>).</p><p>It takes a couple of hours for you to start believing with a blind sort of faith that Jamie, whoever she might be, has all the answers to all the problems in this tucked away little haven. </p><p>Jamie, blank and strong and solid as ice, boiling slowly, though no were to be found at the moment, is grave and nonchalant and resolute, walking unseen around the gardens, fingertips green, full of power to create and mend and repair, like an ancient goddess. Like the wind.</p><p>You don't see her until late afternoon on your second day at Bly, and when you finally get a glimpse of her, you feel as though someone put a fist through your heart, expecting you to just keep on going without noticing you're missing an organ right at the center of your chest.</p><p>//</p><p>It's cold now, the sunset is red, a clear tulip colour paling to flesh webs. There are streaks of it, mauve and purple, sky visible through the kitchen window, divided by the glass squares and then by interlacing branches, leaves overlapping leaves.</p><p>You settle around the table, Miles and Flora have washed their hands and now bouncing lightly in their chairs, waiting for dinner to be served. Flora is gashing about your stories, directing most of her chattering at Owen's back, and he is laughing and nodding while frying sausages in an iron frying pan.</p><p>You're not allowed to help, out of polite hospitality more than anything else, you think, so you make light conversation with Hannah, informing her about your day in the cold sun, and let her gently bully you into having another cup of tea.</p><p>You're too busy laughing at one of Owen's awful jokes (at Hannah's good-natured eye-roll) to notice your old dreams rushing over you. When you lift your head to the sound of heavy boots on the tiled floor, your eyes land on her (almost too late to get a good glimpse of her face), and a shock of electricity surges through your stiffening body.</p><p>The dark memories you stashed away in your head cut deep. A half-remembered face, with a curly cloud of hair around it, rush to the front of your mind and collide with the image of the young woman who swaggers into the kitchen, thin and short and clad in dark denim overalls, smeared with dirt.</p><p>Your breath knots, your body tightens against it, the air fills your mouth and tastes like crispy dinner and old weed. It's too thin to fill your lungs properly.</p><p>There is a deafening ringing in your ears and then silence.</p><p>You close your mouth slowly, as not to alert the entire table to your pathetic panicking. Miles and Flora raise their eyebrows, noticing your expression and your gaping mouth, and you struggle to school your face into something more acceptable. Your body cramps from not moving, goosebumps running all over your arms and thighs.</p><p>(From a rational point of view, this is absurd. Complete insanity. This is a prank. A trick. It's impossible and bizarre – the stuff of fairy-tales. From a rational point of view, it's a cruel game played specifically to throw you off your balance. From a rational point of you, nothing is happening. But you don't have a rational point of view now, and Jamie is the woman from your dreams).</p><p>You watch her, forcing yourself to breathe slowly as you hold the building panic at a distance, looking at her as she turns her back to you. You try to convince yourself it's a mistake, a trick of the light, some insane coincidence that has a perfectly rational explanation. Your internal protests are weak and insignificant, like trying to stop a tsunami with a paper wall. This dirt-smeared gardener is the same woman who's been visiting you in your dreams and you have no good explanation as to how or why.</p><p>(You stare).</p><p>Her hair is messy and brown, sparse, worn down in soft curls that shock you into silence. She's slim and muscular with dirty boots and a scowl, and when she sprays the kids with water, her voice is something familiar (rough around the edges) and nothing scary.</p><p>You can't help but laugh.</p><p>(You try very hard not to feel awkward around her, and secretly you're glad your fingernails are clean and you washed your hair this morning).</p><p>You sit up straight, shoulders pushed back, clutching your fork with a white-knuckled force. You don't know what to say so you're listening to the others talk, familiarity and fondness coating their words, twisting their conversation into a one long teasing joke. You sit there and listen, still and no longer hungry, holding your breath, trying your best not to alert these kind good people to the racing beat of your heart.</p><p>"Miss Clayton," Flora pipes up when she's finished her dinner. "You've hardly touched your food".</p><p>You smile a forcefully cheerful smile. You can feel greenish-gray eyes burning holes in your skin.</p><p>"Just a slow eater." You say with a nervous smile and stuff a forkful of mash into your mouth.</p><p>You don't look at Jamie.</p><p>You try very hard to focus on your food.</p><p>//</p><p>The gardener is something dangerous, you decide. Something wild and troublesome and scary; Like uranium. Like plutonium. Like dynamite. She's a good sort, but you've been surrounded with the good sort your whole life and it has only ever left you helpless.</p><p>The gardener is harmless to the naked eye but charged with lethal energy. If you get too close, surely there would be an explosion.</p><p>So you don't. You float back. You focus on your job and the kids and your need to steer them away from the heavy wooden walls, get them to breathe fresh air. You keep a respectable distance from the gardens, where Jamie spends most of her working hours, and instead focus on the hills.</p><p>If her stare lingers on you longer than necessary, if her mouth twists just so when your eyes collide, if she sighs and turns her back to you when you don't make any sign you saw her looking, it's none of your business.</p><p>You tell yourself you're imagining it all.</p><p>Jamie, as a physical presence, is young and torn apart and clear. Unlike your feverish dreams, she is sheer desperation, shrinking terror, but also unmeasurable pride. She's real and she's here and whatever passed between you two in the dim light of the kitchen, is no longer possible to know.</p><p>You are drained and shaken. When you look at her, you can hear a dry wind, blowing through weedy autumn fields. You hear a whisper of snow. You think about Christmas lights.</p><p>If Jamie feels the same, she doesn't say a word. As far as you're concerned, she doesn't even try to get closer and you wonder, later, much later, when you're memories of Bly got a little crumbled and washed-out, when you can no longer remember the exact shade of your bedroom's wallpaper, if the ending for you would have been sadder, had she felt any different.</p><p>(For the moment being you're in Bly and Jamie is something fascinating. Something distant).</p><p>(You try not to act hurt).</p><p>//</p><p>"Let me out! Let me out!" Your voice is rising and rising, with frustration and terror and finally with anger, but you hear no answer. You bang on the door and you shake the knob and you tell yourself to get a grip, otherwise you'd lose control. You know the dangerous thing is to panic, to walk in circles, to let them know you've got a weakness.</p><p>(<i>Breathe</i>, you tell yourself. <i>Breathe</i>).</p><p>Then, the world is silent. Miles and Flora look truly sorry when they turn the key in the lock and let you out. Their faces are grim and it's over. You look at them, silent, waiting for an explanation that doesn't come. They just stand in front of you, pajamas sodden, brows creased.</p><p>"We're sorry," they try to say but you're not interested in an apology, or an excuse.</p><p>"Beds," you say. "<i>Beds. Now</i>".</p><p>The air is full of sound and empty as they climb back to their beds. Your anger is belted. It's formless. It feels like mud.</p><p>There are no grudges held, silent and unjustly because you don't blame them for what they've done. They are two children who've lost their parents, who've been abandoned by the only member of their family still alive. You can't be angry at them. Why blame a hurricane?</p><p>There are muddy footprints on the floor as you step out of their room, and you sprint out of the house, chasing an unfamiliar ghost, your heart hammering in your chest.</p><p>Outside the house, the world is cold against your flushed skin. There is no power that can protect you.</p><p>You glance up. Two small figures stand in the windows of their twin bedrooms, watching you in silent terror. You're afraid because you can't see what they see and you're exhausted.</p><p>//</p><p>You go back inside and bolt the doors. The house will defend you. Back in your room, you barricade yourself in. You light the bedside-lamp but the air drafting in through holes in the window and the light seem to flutter, so you turn it off.</p><p>You sit in your new room, on top of the bed covers, and weep. You do it quietly as to not wake Miles and Flora, who must be sleeping by now. You want to be back home, you want Judy to put her arms around you and hug you close and tell you everything will be alright like she used to do when you had a particularly hard day at work.</p><p>(You don't want Eddie to keep haunting you, silent and angry and strange, watching you with blinding eyes behind white-hot glasses. You don't want to be locked again inside a closet. You don't want Miles and Flora to come up with excuses).</p><p>You stand up and wipe your face with your sleeve, and start unpacking some of your things. You make a mental note to check the phone number of the house so you could call your mum and make sure she has it, in any case of emergency. You think you might also send a postcard to Judy, mail it in the small town of Bly, a couple of miles to the north.</p><p>You feel better, now that you've got a plan (you feel better, now that you can start over). Tomorrow you will have a serious conversation with the kids, and you'd figure it out together.</p><p>You try not to think about the only other thing that's been making your day difficult.</p><p>The gardener, handsome and smeared with dirt, her soft glowing chestnut hair and her sun-kissed skin and her dirty dirty overalls, all designed to push your pulse into racing speed.</p><p>You almost choked on your potatoes as she strolled in, all swagger and biceps, greyish-green eyes honest and confident. Even now, away from her stormy gaze, you have trouble concentrating.</p><p>You take a deep breath and press your forehead to the smooth expanse of the wooden door.</p><p>You know yourself well enough to realise this might be a problem. Not something you're going to encourage, of course. Something you have to get under control before it spirals any higher, this burning attraction in your chest.</p><p>When you first laid eyes on her, she averted her gaze. You stared like a fool, but you are familiar with small humiliations, so you just gave a dismissive shrug and tried to focus on anything that wasn't her, anything at all.</p><p>Today over lunch she teased the children again, something sweet enough and not too painful. When she flopped down into her chair, she gave you a look that ran all the way through your body, to an achingly warm spot between your legs, and then she wolfed down whatever Owen put on her plate and got back to work, without so much as a glance toward you.</p><p>You take a deep breath and lie down on your bed, still in your clothes. In a moment you hear the first rain hits the window. It patters, changes to steady drumming sound of an avalanche, surrounding.</p><p>(<i>Don't think about her</i>, you tell yourself. <i>Sleep</i>).</p><p>You feel the lake rising in the distance, up over the shore and the small hill, the trees toppling like sand collapsing, roots overturned, the house unmoored, floating like a boat, rocking and rocking.</p><p>You think about the look Jamie gave you just before leaving for the night.</p><p>In her eyes you saw your clothes fall to the floor, you two fall to the floor, the big wooden table in the foyer overturning and broken glass scatters everywhere, glass and china and red roses.</p><p><i>Don't move</i>, her eyes said as she shrugged on her jacket. <i>Not even your hand, where your wedding ring should have been</i>. You watched her, mouth open, breath coming in shallow. <i>Where did you come from?</i> You wanted to ask. Jamie's eyes gave nothing away. <i>You'll cut yourself and there will be a lot of blood, so don't move,</i> was the echo in her heated gaze. <i>Stay here on the floor with me and let me run my tongue over your belly</i>.</p><p>You take another deep breath, you try to tell yourself to take a step back. (Jamie's eyes are still shining behind your eyelids).</p><p>This yarning is new to you. It's a sad silent monster, a black outline looming outside closed doors. You see it and sense it and treat it with caution, but it still manages to slip past your radar.</p><p>You take to watching her, Jamie, the silence that surrounds her, her lips pressed together, her head turned away, the quick sideways glances. You take to listening to her steps, to looking at the way the shoulders are drawn up as if carrying a heavy weight.</p><p>Inside your head, your hand slips through her curls, you surge together on a wave of urgency and desire, roses and leaves twined around you - </p><p>A bloodied hand stretches towards you from under the bed, the glass on the wrist-watch is broken, his fingernails are dirty, so unlike the man, this ghost is imitating. He's right there and you gasp, shivering, the image of a messy-haired Jamie crushing with an embarrassing wave of sober realisation.</p><p>(<i>No</i>).</p><p>You take another breath, calming yourself down. You close your eyes, try to distance yourself from the dark shadow under the bed, a shadow that isn't there. You take another breath and push yourself away from the crooked smile of a dangerously charming gardener you barely know.</p><p>You're going to have to work on this one, you think as you lie there, cold and shivering and tired. You're going to have to work on it soon before something regrettable will happen.</p><p>Jamie's image dissolves behind your eyelids.</p><p>Eddie's ghost melts away into the shadows.</p><p>//</p><p>In the middle of the night, silence wakes you, the rain has stopped. Blank dark, you can see nothing.</p><p>You try to move your hands but you can't. Fear arrives like waves, like footfalls, it has no center. It encloses you like armour. It's not your mind but your flesh that's afraid. Rigid.</p><p>What you no longer think of as Eddie wants to get in. He wants to get in through the window and the door, through the crack he left in you when he died, but he can't because you didn't let him enslave you while he was alive. You are not letting him have you when he's dead.</p><p>You whimper, a pathetic little sound. You need to be reasonable, logical, but logic is a wall built on the other side of terror.</p><p>You hear breathing, withheld, observant, not in the house but all around it.</p><p>When you open your eyes again, you remember the window outline and the shadow of a ghost, but not the cold panic.</p><p>Heavy fog had risen when the sun went down, so thick you can hardly see anything outside your bedroom window.</p><p>You must have fallen asleep again, because Bly is different than you remember and you go outside, dressed in a nightgown you weren't wearing a moment ago, and even though it's cold, you don't feel it. You follow the path of small stones and you marvel at the open darkness that surrounds the huge house. You marvel at the dead silence – silence that doesn't scare you anymore. In the distance, you can hear the howling of dogs. It's a far away sound, maybe from the village, and a night-bird overlapping the animalistic whines. It's all muffled by trees and roads and grass, by thick air, by cold wind. You can also hear the pouring noise of the lake, the waves slash over the tiny shore.</p><p>The air is calm. The mist is white and the hush of moving shadows rocks you lightly. The motion of darkness doesn't scare you. it's total safety.</p><p>It's nearly dawn and you think you might have been dreaming, the kind of dream that creates an illusion, because when you glance down you are still wearing your clothes from the night before, no nightgown in sight.</p><p>The fear leaves you like a hand lifting from your throat and you think there must be rules to this place, rules to the disturbing dreams and to what used to be once upon a time Eddie.</p><p>The world is flat calm as you ready yourself for another day. Outside your window, mist is drifting up off the lawns, the sun burning it away as it rises, the sun itself warm and bright as light through a lens.</p><p>The air smells of earth, like midsummer.</p><p>You take a deep breath before unlocking your door.</p><p>//</p><p>You're not frightened, but you're alarmed, the gold-rimmed glasses, sitting innocently on Flora's little nose, odd and skewed and wrong.</p><p>"Are you cross with me?"</p><p>Flora is crouched on the floor, small and sad. She sits by an open suitcase, a thoughtful and secret expression on her face.</p><p>"No," you manage to choke out. "It's fine. It's fine".</p><p>There is a sort of sick energy as you put the broken glasses on the dresser and say in a thin voice:</p><p>"Excuse me for a minute".</p><p>Then you flee. You flee down the stairs as fast as you can manage without running. You flee through the double doors and into the ice-cold air. You no longer have the energy to pretend everything is fine. You are far beyond the warm, dense need to pretend.</p><p>You are having trouble breathing. You gasp, choke, hot tears running down your cheeks and a sort of childish panic strangle you from the inside, crying for injustice.</p><p>(<i>Why can't you leave me alone?</i> You think in a sobbing desperation).</p><p>"You alright?"</p><p>A voice, solid and tangible and forceful cut through your rising panic and you gasp, loud and stupid, in a pathetic attempt to conceal your tears.</p><p>Jamie is right beside you, a distant and wavering figure, so hard to ignore. Behind her, there is a lurid sunset that's taking its time to fade. In the east, lightning flickering over the underslung sky, then a distant sudden thunder, an abrupt slam of sound.</p><p>"Kids," says Jamie. "They run you ragged".</p><p>You sniffle. "Yeah".</p><p>You expect a ton of questions and warnings and predictions, something uncomfortable and soothing, something like a mild curiosity</p><p>Jamie is intense in her refusal to do what you expect of her. Instead of scorns and teases, there is a sort of assurance about her, flickering in a display of gentle nudging. You feel desolate and grouchy and bloated. The panic is still buzzing in your head.</p><p>"Well," she says. You can hear the small stones crushed under her boots as she rocks lightly on her heels. "People really. All of 'em. S'why I prefer plants. Easy to get along with. And I find if I don't like one… one looks at me kinda funny… I can always just, you know…" and there is a choking sort of sound from behind your shoulder. You hear her clothes move against her body, a light hiss.</p><p>(You breathe. You breathe. You breathe).</p><p>Jamie's voice is soothing and complacent and exactly what you need.</p><p>"So if it's a child-rearing advice you're after – "</p><p>You laugh, grateful for the distraction</p><p>"I'd just… start there, maybe".</p><p>You sit on the edge of a square concrete planter, still trying to catch your breath. Jamie goes on relentlessly as if she doesn't really need for you to answer, or engage. It's a one-party conversation designed to keep you company, and you find it relaxing. You're not choking on oxygen any longer. Your tears have dried up. You hang on Jamie's every word.</p><p>"There we are." She says happily, gently, when you gasp a breathless laugh.</p><p>"S'not so bad, right?"</p><p>When you glance at her over your shoulder, Jamie has her eyes trained on you, hands shoved deep inside her light denim overall pockets, shoulders squared so high, they reach her ears. She's looking at you in a sort of offering, a sort of plea, her eyes shine wetly in the sun, green or grey or blue, you can't tell.</p><p>She's so beautiful. So achingly beautiful, smeared with dirt, smelling like herbs and vanilla and Jamie, a green smell of the outdoors you learned to associate with her after spending a few hours in her company.</p><p>She's making jokes, intelligent and soft, and something to coax you out of your misery. You laugh because you can't stop yourself. You thank her, small and sad and self-conscious. Jamie nods, her expression is something you'd like to keep staring at for the rest of your life.</p><p>You wonder if she knows the effect she has on people. You suspect she doesn't.</p><p>She stands there, the orange sun coming through the tops of the trees and throwing coloured lights all over her, as if she's dipped in, drawing in. You look at her, at the cobalt of her cheek. The lurid tone of her skin.</p><p>You shift lightly.</p><p>"Thank you." You say again.</p><p>"Anytime." Is her predictable, Jamie-like answer. Then she clears her throat, picks her stuff, and smiler a big crooked smile, charming as always, no trace of softness in sight.</p><p>"Right!" she announces and shuffles back. "Well, back to it, then. Chin up, Poppins," and she strides to the house, bouncing lightly on her feet, the usual swagger in her step, not looking back at you.</p><p>//</p><p>The beginning of your life at Bly is easy. Your shadowy fiance is still there, a silvery negative with dark teeth and shining white eyes, glowing in the black sunlight of the other world he emerges from.</p><p>You go about your day, getting closer and closer to a point where you don't have to think too hard.</p><p>The kids are sweet and wonderful when they are not staring gloomily at the walls. Flora does her best at not picking up her dolls, though you're persistent and she's too small to know she doesn't have to do everything you say. Miles is sweet as a pie when he's not glaring at you under his eyebrows or trying his mean mouth on his sister. He tells you something new every day, he likes to share stuff that doesn't cut deep and your days are filled with picnics and lazy walks and overly excited children with no shortage of energy.</p><p>Some days you just sit on the grass, Flora practicing her reading, Miles studying his leather-bound bible, asking questions you try your best to answer. Some days you go on walks around the grounds, up on the hills, above the town to admire the view. Some days they stay in the classroom, Miles stoking the keys of the piano in the corner, Flora cutting figures from old magazines, colouring in her work-book, gluing small eyes on miniature dolls.</p><p>Owen and Hannah are confined to the house, working relentlessly but cheerfully, stepping out to the foyer from time to time to offer you cookies or tea or a five-minute break, to which you are grateful.</p><p>Whenever you stumble upon the housekeeper, though her eyes are cloudy and she seems drifting in thought, she smiles and asks you a sweet, motherly question. She's swiping the halls. She's vacuuming the curtains. She's bossing Owen around. Owen, who is busy coming up with new ideas for lunches and dinners and late suppers, is always ready to do as he's told. He usually has a smear of flower over his cheek and more than once you catch him dabbing his brow with frustration, though his smile is always solid and he's ready to throw any pun your way, sometimes it involves food and sometimes the weather.</p><p>Jamie is a never-ending source of nerves, but also comfort. Her smiles become more and more frequent, her gaze lingers longer and you find her more than a couple of times hanging by your side while the kids are running around, gleefully shrieking, chasing each other. She brings something to occupy her hands with and tells you teasing stories, though she never mocks. It's one of many things you find so charming about her.</p><p>As the days pass, it turns out Jamie is not just very pretty, she's also very interesting and you manage not to get too tongue tide when she's sprawled on the grass next to you, smelling like mowed grass and green soap and sweet sweet (sweet) flowers.</p><p>"Greedy little bugger," she mutters after Miles successfully snatches from her hand the cookies she had just unwrapped.</p><p>You swat her shoulder. She makes a throaty laugh. You smile a big dopey smile.</p><p>Even though it's nice to have her around, you can't seem to get used to her presence. Whenever she turns up, her crooked smile plastered on her pink lips, wearing one of her worker's overalls, hair tied back and her shoes muddy enough to alarm, your heart drops, the English language evaporates from your mind.</p><p>Your fingernails, clean and neat and tidy after almost a year of traveling, begin to look again ragged from biting. You make your fingers bleed sometimes and when Jamie cocks her eyebrow, worried but non-committal, you curse your nervous ticks and wave it off with a breathless laugh.</p><p>"It's nothing," you say. "It's nothing".</p><p>"Alright," she says, her eyes still fixed on you even when she turns her head.</p><p>"It's nothing," you insist.</p><p>(It's a lie).</p><p>//</p><p>You talk too much, but you are not nervous. Jamie has always something to occupy her hands with when she's with you, and so she has to avert her bright brilliant eyes from you.<br/>
(Sometimes it's a relief. Sometimes it's torture).</p><p>She carries tweezers or a watering can or flowers that kind of look like sunflowers but they aren't. She doesn't cut you off when you talk too much and doesn't look at you like you've gone mad when you stammer, even though parts of your stories are weird.</p><p>It's easy to talk to her. The past doesn't appeal to you as much as the future, but Jamie is looking at you with her greenish-gray eyes that sometimes look almost blue, her gaze is steady, her face is smooth, and you think it's time to learn some lessons from the past twenty-nine years of existence.</p><p>You observe Jamie when you think she isn't looking. You look at her like you're trying to savour it all up. She's beautiful (very beautiful) and she's good at her job, officiant and hard working. When she touches the plants, when she buries fingers in pots of soil when she swings a hammer, it's all part of one greater goal, and if you want those hands on your skin, those fingers roaming under your shirt, you bat it away.</p><p>You watch her, drinking her image, indulging in something a year and a half ago you were too scared to even think about.</p><p>"Alright, Poppins," she says and flashes you a big smile, not her teasing or charming or self-aware smile, but a genuine one she saves for you, when she knows it's been a particularly hard day, or when she sees the dark circles under your eyes, or when she catches you staring at her from across the room.</p><p>She shoves her hand under your nose, shakes your trembling fingers with a firm grip.</p><p>"Morning, Poppins," she says, stepping lightly into the kitchen. "Morning, you lot," she says to the others. And then when she's off for the evening; "G'night, Poppins," a small figure in a big truck, bouncing in her seat, going ten miles over the speed limit.</p><p>You're having a hard time shaking her outstretched hand. Whenever you touch her, it's like a lightning strike, like a surge of violent electricity and you're scared she can hear the thunder of your heart.</p><p>Jamie has the hands of a peasant with calloused fingers and a soft touch. It surprises you, just how gentle Jamie is. For someone who works this hard, it's a small miracle.</p><p>Jamie, you observe when you've got the time, seems to be working in some other time, going about her day in a closed off manner. Still, she creases her eyebrows and chews on her inner cheek and nods and nods and nods when you're talking.</p><p>Jamie sucks on cigarettes like they taste good and she wears purple sweaters beneath light denim overalls. All of her clothes have a purple touch to them, even if it's just a hint, and for years to come, you will always associate her with this colour, just like every purplish thing will remind you of her.</p><p>Jamie always has a smear of grease or soil or grass all over her heavy boots. Usually, her hair is a mess, even when she has it tied back, and you think it always looks lovely.</p><p>"Goodnight," you say when she's leaving, a tender feeling blooming in your chest.</p><p>//</p><p>You're cold. It started to drizzle and your coat is back in the house.</p><p>You usher the kids back. They aren't very wet but they do need a change of clothes. They run upstairs, shrilling and happy, Flora chasing Miles' longer legs.</p><p>You huddle your shoulders up, drops ping onto your skin. The grounds of the big house unrolls and folds together again as you pass over them. The tangled maze of gardens, low plants curving, all look very beautiful, even when they are wet and almost out of colour.</p><p>The weather is tricky, ever-shifting, the wind swells up quickly.</p><p>The house is standing huge and proud, stretching over the land, showing through the trees and Jamie's beautifully arranged gardens.</p><p>The sounds of the world are dwindling to a whine and fading in the woosh of rain. The space is quiet, the wind has gone down a little, and the world is silver-white and flat. Your ears and body tingle, aftermath of vibration, like feet taken out of rollerblades, and you smile as you enter the house.</p><p>Jamie is in the kitchen, swinging in her chair like a school-student and you have the urge to tell her to stop, to tell her she'll break her neck if she keeps doing it and she smiles at you her crooked knowing smile like she can guess why you're staring.</p><p>She sways back and forth, rocking, and she looks so young and so happy, you don't have it in you to tease her about it.</p><p>"S'raining," she says and you make a weird sound low inside your chest, a grumble or a hum.</p><p>"Is it?" says Owen, distracted by the dough he's rolling back and forth on the counter.</p><p>"Should change your clothes, then," Jamie's eyes are dark and you almost choke on your tongue. "Else gon' get sick, eh?"</p><p>"Yeah." You squick.</p><p>The kitchen smells like hamburgers and spices and Owen whistles a tune you don't recognise, his back turned to you.</p><p>Outside the wind starts again, brushing over the trees and vegetation, the air is cool and fluid, the tops of the trees are moving behind the dark window. The sound of Owen's whistle ripples through the room, the shining glass of the windows give off icy light, the moon breaking on small cracks.</p><p>Each hair on your body lifts with shivers when Jamie smiles at you, the echoes of intense desire deflect from inside you, surrounding you.</p><p>In her bright eyes, everything echoes.</p><p>//</p><p>The routine in Bly Manor is pleasing, though your figure in the shadows persistent and angry, fixed, steady, immobile like the man he imitates, and you chew your fingers more than ever.</p><p>You don't think of it as Eddie any longer. You see it as a dark figure of thick darkness that lives in the shadows, under the eath, or inside something, a cave of a sort. He is enormously powerful, almost like a god, but it's an unhappy power that scares you. The stationary quality to him is unnerving.</p><p>In the mornings, you help Flora to dress, and make sure both she and Miles brush their teeth and wash their faces. At lunch, you'd sometimes have a picnic, with buttered white breads of all kinds, spread with grape jelly and raw carrots and cut-up apples and crispy bacon Owen insists on making just this way.</p><p>Jamie, a distracting presence of her own would sometimes take her lunch with you, gently teasing Miles, happily winding up Flora, munching happily on beef sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs. She puzzles you, this strong woman, this soft gardener, this wild force of nature with her gentle smile and undertones of anger, something you understand and something you long to decipher. Something you cannot make out.</p><p>Jamie isn't like anyone you have ever imagined meeting. You are happy around her, which makes you more afraid when the sun declines and the evening coats the world in thick darkness.</p><p>The shadow of Eddie is frightening, the lingering scent and memories of Jamie disguised as fascination. You have to work harder on steering your thoughts away from her small frame and clean smell when the sun goes down, a task that becomes somewhat impossible as the days go by.</p><p>Between the dreams and the shadows, during the daytime, you are playing with Miles and Flora, you come up with activities in order to coax them to tidy up their rooms. You make easy, short study sessions in the sun, you watch them play with butterflies and beetles and rubber balls. When you're not cooped up in your room, when the sun is shining and your world is a buzzing white noise of laughs and kids and distant traffic, you have sudden doubts about Eddie and the things you see in the shadows. You think maybe you are going just a little crazy, believing such terrible nonsense, and you don't want the others, gentle Mrs. Grose or smiley Owen or brilliant Jamie to find out.</p><p>You don't know what you'd do if they found out. You go into the mirror every night, glance behind the covers, and when you see the tall dark figure just behind your shoulder, with the shining eyes and the bloodied wrists and the swirling anger, you jump back, startled, scared, unable to move.</p><p>You were never scared of the dark and it disturbs you, this directionless fright, this suffocating unbearable fear.</p><p>In Bly, you develop a kind of homesickness you failed to have back home. It's homesickness for a place where you never lived and you're far enough away from the village, small as it is, shrunken in the horizon, to miss it too. It's an optical illusion; distant and clear, the red brick houses and the white startling church and far too little phone-lines, and you know why Owen hates it, but you don't feel the same.</p><p>//</p><p>Unlike everything else in Bly, which is sweet and comforting and predictable, a lot like home (much more like home than the one you had back in America), Jamie is something else. She wears wool socks and heavy combat boots and high-waisted jeans. She wears overalls of all kinds, and men's flannel shirtsleeves rolled. It's the kind of carelessness you can find in worn-out clothes that are never dirty. Faded, but well washed.</p><p>You are wearing your American gear, pastels, and jeans and sophisticated blouses and you wonder what she thinks of you and if she finds your clothes strange, perhaps immoral.</p><p>(Your clothes, which were ever only a complex disguise, now a part of you, are bright and faint and soft. You must shine on the gray background of the sky, the deep brown of wood).</p><p>If Jamie does find you weird, it doesn't show. She's watching you from the corner of her eye, her lips curled up with amusement, her stare is electrifying. Your body feels like a live wire when she stares.</p><p>No pretence. Not enough courage to step closer.</p><p>//</p><p>"Miles says God is everywhere. Even under the bed. Even inside my heart." Flora's voice is small and frightened in the middle of the night and you shift on the edge of her bed, smoothing her soft hair with gentle fingers.</p><p>"Oh, sweet girl," you sigh.</p><p>It's about three in the morning, the house is cold and dark and creaking, stretching it's boards and floors and floors, inhaling deeply. Your feet are freezing and even though your nightgown is thick flannel, you can't keep yourself warm.</p><p>"Miles says I can never escape him. Not ever. Not even after I die".</p><p>"You have nothing to be scared of." You say in a whisper. Beside her, the dollhouse squick lightly, almost a non-sound. Flora's eyes shift to it as if she's expecting to find someone there.</p><p>There is no-one there.</p><p>"Miss Clayton?"</p><p>"Hmm?"</p><p>"If God never sleeps, what does he do?"</p><p><i>I don't know</i> is the best answer, the truest answer you can give. <i>Let's me sleep</i> is another, but Flora had a nightmare and Flora is small and scared and her eyelashes are wet with tears. You can't just dismiss her fears. You can't let your weariness show. She's a child and she needs you and you remember all too well how it felt, being small and sad and lonely, and not having anyone at your side to calm you down. To ward of the monsters lurking in the dark.</p><p>"Did Miles also say God is good?" You ask softly, patting her narrow chest over the covers, a slow rhythm that Judy used to strum on your back whenever staying home was too much and sleeping proved to be as difficult as explaining how exactly the heat in your chest is burning away at your drumming heart.</p><p>"No," says Flora. Her eyes are big and round and she watches you carefully, drinking every word.</p><p>"Mm-hm," you say gently. "God isn't roaming around at night, spying on us. He keeps us safe, just like you do with your talismans".</p><p>"Oh," Flora says in a tired whisper, her eyelids are heavy with sleep. "It does sound true".</p><p>"Yeah," you hum and you hope she will never lose her innocence. Will never question the existence of a higher power, like you did.</p><p>"And you know what?"</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"I am here, too. And as long as I'm here, I will never let anything bad happen to you".</p><p>"Of course".</p><p>When Flora falls asleep, her mouth opens a little. You're not tired, so you sit by her side and watch her for a while. She is a restless sleeper. She groans and kicks and snores lightly. When her sleep deepens, her body relaxes. You climb down the bed and tiptoe across the floor. When you reach the door, you check behind your back to see if you will be needed after all and then sneak off to your room.</p><p>Sometimes, you can't fall back asleep after being woken up, so you stand in your window. When there is a moon, the flower gardens are silvery grey, as if all the colours had been sucked out of them. You can see some stone statues peaking from the dark, cold light. You shiver and go back to bed, then you lie and watch the moving shadows of the curtains and listen to the gurgling and cracking of the house as it shifts itself.</p><p>You don't dare to think of Jamie, even though you want to.</p><p>Eddie keeps hidden.</p><p>//</p><p>You learn, very slowly, to live in the present. The present is no longer a wash-out and your life is not a bog. You're no longer feeling marooned. The impulse to phone your mother, or Judy, or anyone else from your old life is dying, getting smaller and smaller every day.</p><p>You're in England. In Bly. In this beautiful northern landscape, with cold breeze in the middle of the summer and old-world charm. The country side is heaven, and your old life, though embedded in your brain like a metal plate left from an operation, turn garish, slowly evaporate into something barely there. If you let it get out of control, it will cease to exist. You won't remember your old life.</p><p>In Bly, there is no sense of getting away, of trying too hard. You hear the memories murmur in your head, like a far-away angry mob, but it's almost quiet. Almost peaceful. It'd more than you've ever had.</p><p>Bly is new and intended and easy. It materializes from green grass and heavy grey sky and two wonderfully polite children with bright eyes and endless questions.</p><p>Your old life goes on without you and you're not caged. You're free to walk and smile and roam, to watch and to look and to laugh. You can finally unclench yourself, soak in the atmosphere, lie back and enjoy it all somehow, even with Eddie lingering in the shadows, even with your mirrors covered up.</p><p>Even with Jamie in the back of your head, charming and light and dangerously pretty with swagger in her step and spring in her eyes.</p><p>The kids have a somewhat morbid intensity you don't always catch. Their doomed eyes watching just slightly behind you, something easy to miss. Flora has a tendency to smile at the wall behind you, an empty space, and you wonder if your intimidating ghost, your personal punisher, and punishment, are visible to her child's eyes.</p><p>You find out you're tired with yourself, with your former collected self. You're no longer the pure wide-eyed teacher, leaning on your fiance's arm, flinching from the dark because it is expected of you.</p><p>You are bolder and stronger than you ever gave yourself credit for and watching Jamie climbing an unsteady ladder, trotting across the grass, circling the grounds, all the while her brow's set, her eyes firm, her posture slumped but somehow rigid, all of this makes you tired and itchy with yourself.</p><p>You don't want the pure Danielle, you want the calloused Dani, the clumsy Dani, the one who falls into puddles and sweat and cry and breathe too loud, the woman rather than the terrified girl. You are tired with your faceless fears and dark shadows and corridors and mazes and forbidden doors.</p><p>You're sick of covered mirrors.</p><p>//</p><p>"Miles?" you say, worried and alarmed.</p><p>Miles has a very sad look on his face. He seems lost, standing in the middle of the foyer, hands flailing about, his brow creased.</p><p>"Miles?"</p><p>"I'm so sorry," says the small boy and puts his arms around your waist. He isn't scary and he isn't strange, he's a child with no one to comfort him, no one to cry to. You hold him, stroking his hair lightly.</p><p>"I'm sorry. Miss Clayton… I really am sorry. Terribly sorry".</p><p>You have no idea what he's talking about so you say nothing. Children believe that everything bad that happens is somehow their fault, and in this Miles and Flora is no exception. But you don't know what happened, or what made Miles so worked up, so you just hug him, rock him lightly until he is calm again.</p><p>"Miss Clayton?" he says and his eyes are wet.</p><p>"What is it?"</p><p>"Do you think Jamie is very cross with me?"</p><p>It's a strange question and it takes you almost half an hour of actively seeking her out to understand why he was asking this question.</p><p>//</p><p>There is a red mess on the ground, hot-coloured flowers, far from soothing. They are already a little withering by the time you get to them, though they still give off their peppery smell. You suspect (by the way the are scattered and by the sneering woman kneeling right beside the mess) that they've been cut from the rose plant by a pair of small hands, mildly mean, but the sort of thing you wouldn't get upset about.</p><p>Not Jamie.</p><p>Jamie is standing near the fence with her back to you, looking at her rose garden, eyebrows furrowed, her eyes burning. The late afternoon sunlight falls obliquely between the tree trunks on the slight hill, down on her, clouding her in an orange haze, and she wavers, sneering to herself like an angry wolf.</p><p>She doesn't realise she has an intruder. The roses, the fence, the path, all violated, now her world's excluded her, as logic excludes the burning desire within your stomach.</p><p>You say her name. Once. Very quietly.</p><p>It's a question and a warning and a plea. It's a prayer.</p><p>"Jamie – ?"</p><p>Jamie bends, sitting on her heels. You are not frightened because Jamie is not dangerous for you to be frightened of. Her gaze on you is angry and green, depthless but lambent as the eyes of animals seen at night in the car headlights. Reflectors. She does not approve of you being there, but she doesn't disapprove it either. There is an awkward quality to her. Mournful. Lost.</p><p>"I – I'm…"</p><p>Jamie tosses the crushed rose to the ground. She is bent over the cut roses, face hidden from you, her body buzzing with angry electricity. You watch her back, a few paces away from what feels like a storm erupting.</p><p>"I'm gonna kill him." Her tight-lipped determination, her bubbling angry laugh, make you leap after her in reckless abandon.</p><p>Jamie is furious. She's enraged. The anger radiates like hot flames from her and she's hissing something under her breath, a sort of violent promise, a sort of complete loss of control. Jamie, who is always solid and collected, who is always slightly smiling, who rolls her eyes and doesn't let anything phase her, is boiling with rage over a few cut flowers.</p><p>"I swear to god – " she's spitting the words, angry and chill, like broken ice. You grab her shoulder and pull her back.</p><p>"Hey! No!"</p><p>Up close, Jamie looks a little different. She looks like someone you've never seen before, though you recognise her face. She's more tenuous, less solid somehow, but more detailed, you have never stood so close to her and your heart gives a violent leap. Her hair, which was combed so neatly this morning, now a wonderful mess of curles around her face. Her eyes are not blue and not green and not grey, but something in between, all of the colours and neither one, bright and wonderful and full of primal rage, of ancient fury. She's very pretty. Handsome. She has a hard expression on her face. She smells of cigarette smoke and damp earth and mown lawn, a smell so pleasing you almost lean forward.</p><p>"A little boy cut a few flowers, what's the big – "</p><p>Jamie, who doesn't notice your struggle or your sudden hyper-interest in all the small details of her face, lashes out. Something materializes between you, a hot spike.</p><p>"They weren't ready to be cut!"</p><p>Jamie is furious. Her eyes are stormy and violent and a muscle jumps in her jaw from the force of her teeth clenching together.</p><p>It's reassuring, to find Jamie so real, underneath her appearance and swagger. She's human and complicated and she's carrying a sort of burden you can't decipher yet. There is a great deal piled up on her narrow shoulders, and you wonder what would you find if you dug down under it. Jamie, human and clever and angry, is not a simple pure gold. She isn't shining and isn't perfect, as you were afraid to find her. Instead, she's something young and possibly baneful, like an iron charm rusting among old bones. She's a real actual human being, with likes and dislikes and a very particular way of doing things.</p><p>It's a heavy thing, this new realisation. It slings like an iron chain around your neck.</p><p>(It's freeing like some one cut the ties and shown you a beautiful real thing beneath a golden slung ruby).</p><p>She's groaning a muffled moan, something that can easily become a shout. There is broken glass on her tongue, a sound so unfamiliar you're having trouble understanding her words. Her eyes are wild, dancing all over your face. She looks like an animal in a too small of a cage.</p><p>You flinch back, startled by her anger, taken by surprise by the sheer violence in her usually calm eyes. As you step back, Jamie's face falls. She loses altitude, loses resilience. Her will falters.</p><p>"Look," she says. "I just have a way of doing things and I don't like people messing about with my garden – "</p><p>Your heart aches for her. It's the complete terror regarding her own anger that melts your heart. Jamie, usually so sure and radiant, stands somehow saggier and emptier by your side, shivering under your palm.</p><p>"No. You're right," you say, clipped and calm and solid. "You're right. I'll talk to him".</p><p>(You mean to say: '<i>You have a right to be angry</i>'. You mean to say: '<i>Please don't let me stop you</i>'. You mean to say: '<i>The is sunlight in you that feels like home, like a dream, like a possibe future</i>').</p><p>You stand there, holding her. She can barely breathe against the white-hot anger. Her body is trembling under your hands.</p><p>You don't know why you try to calm her down. you mean what you say. Jamie puts so much work into the garden, it's only fair to rage and scream bloody murder. But you try, anyway. You want her to know she isn't alone in this, however angry she may be.</p><p>Jamie shifts her weight from one foot to the other, uneasy and anxious. She breathes hard, a sort of annoyed huff, though you can tell she isn't annoyed with you.</p><p>You don't really know what pushes you to talk to her, to try and calm her down. Perhaps it's your own shortcomings. Perhaps it's the familiar sadness over lost control. Perhaps it's the fury in her eyes.</p><p>She clenches her hands, tense and impatient and cold. Then another emotion sweeps over her, shame emerging from beneath the surface, and she shifts her eyes. Where there was darkness before there is only a gentle apology and her voice is thick when she tries for a joke.</p><p>"Look, ah… can we go back to the bit where you're acting mental and I have to talk you down?"</p><p>You laugh because it's funny and because she's miserable and because she can barely contain her anger in the face of cut roses.</p><p>Something builds higher in your chest.</p><p>Eddie glares harder behind your shoulder.</p><p>(Jamie smile a wonderful kind of smile).</p><p>//</p><p>You learn the house inside out; its crevices, its caves, its tunnels and corridors. You peer into hiding places under the stairs, which contain a jumble of discarded overshoes and mittens, an umbrella with broken ribs and an ancient coat smelling like mothballs and history. You explore the various branches of the cellar, the coal cellar, the root cellar, the wine cellar with its huge collection of wine bottles laid out on boards. Your favourite is the cold cellar, which is Owen's domain. It has cabbages and swashes laid out, beets and carrots growing whiskery in their boxes of sand. There are potatoes with blind albino tentacles, apples in barrels, shelves of preserves – dusty jams and jellies glinting like uncut gems, pickles and strawberries, and peeled tomatoes and applesauce, all in gleaming jars.</p><p>The rooms on the second floor smelled like crushed mint, all clean thanks to Hannah's attentive care. The back rooms behind the kitchen are a little different. The floors there are damp and there are spidery dandelions, tired and small, trying to grow between crushed boards. You walk around, marvel at the library, with its hot sick stink of leather and dust, alarming and alluring and empty.</p><p>When the kids insist on helping Owen in the kitchen, and when he waves his hand for you to run, run and have some time for yourself, you make your way stealthily through the labyrinths of shadow. You take solace in this, in your secrecy, your knowledge of hidden pathways, your childish belief you cannot be seen.</p><p>You hear the children's voices, high and thin and happy. They are pestering Owen, and you feel bad for leaving them, so you cut your expeditions short and return to the living, jagged and solid.</p><p>//</p><p>You gather your underwear from all over the room where they are growing and out them all in a washbasin. You scrub it with a bar of stringy green soap in the reddish water, which has a faint odour of iron, too subterranean gas. You feel languid and sluggish, the kids are in their rooms, preparing for dinner, and you are busy yourself with your laundry, the bad dreams and the shadows are far away.</p><p>"You know, Poppins... Hannah'll be pretty upset if she'd ever found out you're doing it on your own".</p><p>Jamie is standing in the doorway, hair a mess, eyes agleam, arms folded on her chest. She's wearing her mud cooked boots and dark overalls and a stripped shirtsleeve.</p><p>She looks amused to no end.</p><p>You smile what you hope is not a startled smile. You really happy to see her. You wring your clothes out and you feel gritty. Jamie is all too charming for you to sit on the floor, hunched over a washbasin. You straighten your back.</p><p>"You're staying for dinner?" You say instead of answering.</p><p>Jamie nods, serious and stern and somehow very very gentle.</p><p>She has a way of grinning, of taunting, of making gentle fun of you and you always smile back to let her know you appreciate the poke, you are in on the joke, she doesn't offend you.</p><p>Jamie is miraculous in some unspecified way and you can't seem to take your eyes off of her. Even when you should. </p><p>There is a soft quality to her that sticks and doesn't let go.</p><p>//</p><p>You hear Peter Quint's name mentioned for the first time by Hannah, a scowl on her face and an exhausted, burning hatred in her eyes.</p><p>It's an offhanded remark in an unremarkable afternoon. You're sitting outside, in Jamie's beautifully arranged garden, Owen with a tray of bright-coloured cocktails, the children running around, screaming and laughing, not dirty but not clean, without any trace of shadows on their faces.</p><p>It's a damp afternoon, hot and the air drowsy. The glare of the sky is blue and the freedom is pointless, aimless, boring, and soothing. There are unformed possibilities in the air, even as the day folds into an early evening.</p><p>Hannah says Peter's name with such venom, you almost drop your glass. Beside you, Jamie sneers.</p><p>You glance her way. An angry Jamie is always something a little foreign, a little wrong, though no less fascinating, and you can't seem to teer your eyes off of her. She's buzzing with hatred when Hannah says '<i>That man, Peter Quint</i>' and her grip is tightening on her glass, hard enough to bruise.</p><p>She's wearing loose jeans and a crew-neck grey jersey, smelling like soap and freshly turned earth and you're dizzy with desire.</p><p>Hannah has a smile imposed by the threat of disapproval. Who's? You cannot tell.</p><p>When the kids are showered and fast asleep, you go downstairs, to the kitchen, where Owen and Jamie are still sprawled on identical chairs right by the table, tired in a way a day of slumber leaves people drained. Each has a cookie in hand, Jamie's fingers toying with her half-eaten one, Owen chewing happily on his. Hannah offers you a cup of tea and you thank her in a grateful whisper.</p><p>The sky is hazy grey, the moon low in the sky and a pinkish colour, like fish blood. The clouds are heavy and the lawn is slippery with rain. You did your best today to engage the children in fast-pace activities to take their minds off of the subject of Peter Quint, with little success.</p><p>Miles looked sad when he overheard Peter's name. Flora sighed like she does when she speaks of miss Jessel or her parents like she truly misses a man who everybody else deemed trouble.</p><p>"He's just a gold-digger," Owen says, trying to calm Hannah's quiet rage down.</p><p>"As if it's better." She sneers, frustrated. "Got his sticky fingers on one of Herny's bank accounts. God, this man".</p><p>"He stole from Henry?" You ask, shocked. You remember Henry Wingrave's cold eyes. You can't imagine anyone brave enough to steal from him. He seemed to you like the kind of man who would hunt you down for the kick of it if you were ever to cross him. It makes you shudder.</p><p>Jamie hums. "Cleaned him out, the fucker".</p><p>There is a sort of air around Jamie that does nothing to quiet down your rising lust. Her hands clench into fists and you want badly to misunderstand her hands, misunderstand the intention of her shaking.</p><p>Jamie's cheeks are flushed, her eyes blazing like an avenging Fury, her brown hair coming unpinned and it's too much for you. You look at her and nod and clench your teeth. What you really want is to kiss the anger off her face. You want to taste the ugly words on her lips, have her lick into your mouth with furious impatience.</p><p>(You shouldn't dream about it. You shouldn't think about Jamie and kissing her and touching her and having her flushed cheeks pressed to yours. Eddie is there whenever you stray from strictly professionalism, watching you with guilty reverence. You don't know what he would do if you'd actually attempted getting closer to Jamie. You don't want to find out. Rack and ruin will be the likeliest outcome).</p><p>Jamie shows you a polaroid picture of Peter Quint and Rebecca Jessel. She's a beautiful young woman with clever eyes and dark skin and you wish you could have known her. There is a trace of worry in her brow, a hint of a smile. Peter Quint looks somewhat familiar, eyes glaring under low drawn eyebrows, his arm draped securely around Rebecca collarbones. You try and remember where you might know him from, but it's like trying to catch smoke. It's just outside your reach no matter how hard you try.</p><p>You don't dwell too much on this, though. Peter Quint is gone and nothing you need to think about.</p><p>He's not coming back.</p><p>//</p><p>It's dark and there is mist rising from the lake, swirling like skim milk in the air, dripping from the bare twigs of the bushes. The stones of the path are slippery. Owen and Jamie said their goodbyes a few hours ago and because it was a particularly good day, the direct result of a bad one, you decided to reward the kids with a little game.</p><p>Neither one of them is tired, you can tell, and Miles has been making hushed comments for at least two days now, about how unfair it is for him to have to sleep at such a ridiculously early hour, a notion you don't necessarily agree with, but something you're happy to ignore for tonight if it means his smile will stay this light and childish for more than a couple of stolen moments.</p><p>The game is fun, harmless and foolish and a little eerie in the dark house. You can hear Hannah moving about in her room downstairs as you make your way through the corridors. It's easy and fun, like the games you used to play when you were small, Eddie and his brothers hiding while you're searching, Judy gently pointing you to their predictable hiding places.</p><p>Then, all of a sudden, Miles is on the floor, shaking and seizing lightly and there is a smiling face in the window, humorless and frightening, not entirely human.</p><p>You scream when you recognise him from the picture Jamie showed you earlier. He has the same hard eyes, the same sandy hair, the same long sandy face, handsome but weary. You've seen him before, on your second day in Bly. It's the same man who was glaring at you over the gardens, all the way up on the parapet.</p><p>Peter Quint.</p><p>He's closer now, standing in the window, just about pressing his nose to the glass. His stare is grim and dark as if he's watching you from a great distance. You've never seen this sort of look on anyone's face before. Startled? Angry? puzzled? Glaring from the other side of the glass, it's hard to tell.</p><p>You run outside, gripping a poker with cold fingers. You don't remember picking it up from beside the fireplace. The grip is cool to the touch, the metal heavy. By the time you reach the window from outside the house, the lawn is empty and there isn't so much as a footprint in the mud.</p><p>There is a lot of frightening clucking and dithering and scolding, though you're not sure who's scolding who and for what. Hannah makes a cup of broth and you make a warm bath for Miles and a hot-water bottle for Flora because she's shaking and you have little to no idea how to comfort her.</p><p>"I don't know who it was." You say, stammering over words. It's a lie because you have seen this face twice before, staring from across the garden. Glaring from a flat picture.</p><p>"Who was who?" Hannah's eyebrows are drawn down. She looks like she hasn't been sleeping for weeks.</p><p>"It's was Peter." Miles pipes up. Hannah's jaw drops. You have to nod in agreement.</p><p>"I think it was." You say quietly.</p><p>"Good lord!" Says Hannah and her face darkens.</p><p>Miles looks down, his hands clasped between his knees. Flora makes a wailing sound, broken and sad and inconsolable.</p><p>//</p><p>Hannah calls the police after you tell her about the strange man in the window, and you're fretting over Miles, who doesn't look as pale as before but still have a sort of ashen quality to his face.</p><p>It's a good thing you and Hannah have at least half a wit between the two of you, because the children look frightened, startled to the core, and you're about half a second from crawling on the floor and letting yourself to dissolve into a frightened puddle.</p><p>You sit on the sofa, with Miles tucked on your right and Flora on your left, while Hannah walks around with a hot cup of tea, peaking through the window so as to not miss the approaching police car. You wrap your arms around the kids, hugging them tight like Judy used to do on Sunday afternoon when you and Eddie decided to stay home and watch some B-rate horror movie.</p><p>Your feet are stone-cold, your teeth are chattering. You can't get out of your head the image of the man in the window, smokey eyes and swirling darkness, the sort of silvery smile on his lips you only see in films.</p><p>"You alright, dear?" Hannah smooths her palm over your head in a motherly fashion, and you feel like crying. Her tenderness is touching, a welcome reassurance that you're not alone.</p><p>Miles and Flora had both dozed off at your sides, curled into tiny balls of fear and exhaustion under think plaid blankets.</p><p>You smile up at Hannah, your lips quivering. "I was so worried for Miles".</p><p>"I know." She says gently.</p><p>//</p><p>The policeman talks over your head as if you were a child and makes a face when you try to point out a thing or two he missed while filling up a report. He has a strong face and a stiff uniform and he calls Hannah '<i>ma'am</i>' instead of the usual familiarities she gets from the town's folk.</p><p>He has the same tired expression your mother used to wear whenever she thought you were overreacting – patronising and saccharine and fake. It makes your blood boil in an unexpected rage.</p><p>"I'm not sure what else you want me to do".</p><p>"Anything, really".</p><p>Hannah makes a vague threat and you are still buzzing with bottled adrenaline, so decide to put your energy to good use, after tucking the kids in their beds and making sure they are alright.</p><p>"Where are you going with that?" Hannah asks in bewilderment when she catches a glimpse of you storming toward the front doors, poker in one fist and your denim jacket in the other. She has a green phone clutched in her hand, the ringing tune a soft background noise to her question.</p><p>"I'm gonna do my own sweep." You say and storm out the door, leaving Hannah to do the explaining Henry will no doubt will require.</p><p>//</p><p>There is a wild plum tree at the back of the garden, on the other side of the fence. It's ancient, gnarled, the branches knuckled with a black knot. Jamie mentioned more than once it should come down, but also pointed out that technically speaking, it isn't on Bly's grounds so it wasn't her concern.</p><p>It blossoms, unasked, untended, with a little nudging from Jamie's gentle hands, hands that cannot but nourish and prompt, hands that won't leave any sort of vegetation to its own devices, if she can help it flourish.</p><p>You're making a wide circle around the house. You set a perimeter, through the statue garden, to the small chapel, then over the lake and back home.</p><p>You're not the type to jump at the sight of human-shaped figures even while they emerge from the dark, but when the slightly deformed shape moves toward you with purpose between two huge statues, you let out a sharp breath, a scream almost, waving your flashlight in a wide circle.</p><p>"Jesus!"</p><p>"<i>Jesus!</i>"</p><p>Jamie, dressed in a warm jacket and clutching a shotgun in her hands, glares at you, more startled than angry, mouth a sharp line, eyes agleam.</p><p>"Shot plenty of rats with it," she says through gritted teeth when you stare at the rifle in her arms. "More than happy to add Peter <i>fuckin'</i> Quint to the tally".</p><p>Jamie manages to make it seem the hight, not of fashion or chic exactly, but certainly hight of something – this worn-out overalls and boots, something that implies that such things are beneath her notice. She somehow looks more sharp in the darkness, like an ice pick just before the murder.</p><p>"You checked down there yet?"</p><p>You shake your head, once.</p><p>Jamie, shrugging and pointing her chin to the chapel, waiting for you to follow, is like a raised fist in a silent crowd.</p><p>"C'mon, then".</p><p>You do the rest of the swipe together, like a tidal wave, or doom. You half expect Peter Quint to show up from the shadows, to be discovered by you and Jamie while you both drag your feet through the muddy ground.</p><p>You make it inside in one piece, cold and shaken. Owen has already discarded his coat and Hannah made tea and after you check one more time on Miles and Flora, who sleep soundlessly in their beds, you join the others in a side room that must have been a parlour of some sort, a very long time ago.</p><p>You watch Jamie tease Hannah and Owen in her gentle way you already grown used to. She smiles a lopsided smile, her eyes are tired. She says something, makes a joke, and Owen pours liquor into your tea, much more than needed.</p><p>It's easy. Friendly. Almost fun. You sit in a huge armchair while the others talk about Quint and Rebecca, Owen's dark eyes staring at the small fire dancing behind the iron fence. Hannah makes humming noises. Jamie knits her eyebrows, glaring at nothing.</p><p>You have a need to slide your thumb on her skin, try and smooth the crease above her nose.</p><p>(When she looks at you, you avert your eyes).</p><p>A dandelion of light bursts inside the fireplace. Outside, the sky is dark.</p><p>Later, you will wonder if this was the beginning, this evening, this accident, this unimaginable affair – in a small room on the first floor with two sleepy kids in their beds and four concerned adults with no idea how to go on. It's hard to know. Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognised.</p><p>Then, later, they spring.</p><p>//</p><p>There is fury and grief in Jamie's beautiful beautiful (intelligent) eyes and you tighten your hold on the square photo, tracing blindly her twitching face.</p><p>"He got away," she says in a sort of gloomy verdict. "She paid the price".</p><p>There is a thunderstorm on Jamie's face, the kind you know all too well. Old memories and unresolved truths swimming on her face. Jamie's talking about Rebecca in a tone that suggests she feels she let her down. like somehow, Jamie had failed her. Jamie's also making it very easy for you to read more than she intends to share. There is something personal behind the way Jamie puts her words.</p><p>You look at her and say nothing, knowing nothing will help. Sometimes it's best not to say anything. Not to start. Better to keep your mouth shut. You don't want to hurt her. Losing someone you care about is familiar and painful. Words can't mend the bloodied wounds they leave behind.</p><p>Jamie is staring at the photo in your hand, and you can tell she's gazing into faraway memories, somewhere distant in time, if not in space.</p><p>"So what," you say in a hushed tone. "He's stalking a dead woman? Risking prison for someone he didn't even bother to bring along?" Jamie's eyebrows jump up her mouth twists.</p><p>You can't believe in such a thing. There is something more to Peter and Rebecca's story.</p><p>"It doesn't make sense."</p><p>Jamie's face is white. She looks very young and very sad. When she speaks again, it's evident she is no longer talking about Rebecca.</p><p>"The wrong kind of love can fuck you up," you sit close enough to Jamie to feel the warmth of her skin. You can also feel the tremors coming from her, like a train track vibrating. "follow ya," she nods her head, eyes closed, a deep concentration on her face. "Make you do some <i>really stupid shit</i>".</p><p>You both are very on edge. You can see that the strain of the past few days is taking a toll on her. Jamie, though eyes gleaming and face smooth, is worn out.</p><p>"And those two? Believe me. <i>that</i> was the wrong kind of love".</p><p>A dark past dances across her face and you think <i>'tell me. Tell me everything. Lay it out on me. Let me carry some of your load</i> but you don't and she wouldn't.</p><p>What you say is: "We've all been in the wrong kind of love for one reason or another." And you hope Eddie isn't standing behind the sofa, glaring at you behind blinding glasses.</p><p>Jamie sighs like a tired child. Like a woman at the end of her rope.</p><p>"Mm-hm. But I saw how he twisted himself into her. Burrowed in deep," Jamie's stare is ice and daggers, burning like hell-fire. You avert your eyes. Her face is too open, too intimate. You feel like you're invading her privacy, just by looking.</p><p>"I know why so many people mix up love and possession…"</p><p>You snap your head up. When Jamie meets your eyes there is a different look on her face. She is no longer angry, no longer alarmed. Any trace of jealousy is gone and what remains are a pair of soft creeping eyes, a faint smokey odour, tight pressed lips.</p><p>"But guess what that means?" Jamie's voice is low, deep, almost with a rough scraped overlay to it as a cat's tongue, like velvet made of leather. "He didn't just trap her. He trapped himself. And I hope she haunts that fucker forever".</p><p>Jamie is still looking at you, not averting her eyes anymore. You examine her face with interest and a certain dread. Jamie's eyes are intelligent and oddly dark in the faint lighting. Her eyebrows are relaxed, smoothly arched.</p><p>Your ears are ringing and your nose is full of Jamie's unique smell. More earth than cigarettes. More sweet perfume than grass. No trace of sweat. A hint of alcohol. Very pleasant. Very distracting.</p><p>"People do, don't they," you manage to say in a small voice. The children are sound asleep on the upper floor. Hannah's head is still tucked between Owen's shoulder and neck, his cheek resting lightly on her herd. "Mix up love and possession".</p><p>"Yeah. They do," Jamie says languidly, cautiously. There is a deep hunger in her stormy eyes. Your own pulse is a thunder behind your ears.</p><p>"I don't think it should be possible," you long to be able to touch her face, to have her tucked at your side, so smooth her fleshless and invulnerable. "I mean, they're opposites really – love and ownership".</p><p>Jamie's eyes are damp and pink, so young and so tired. She's looking at you like she's seeing you for the first time.</p><p>"Yeah." Is her answer and she doesn't have to say anything at all. You understand.</p><p>//</p><p>After Jamie had gone back downstairs, having tucked Flora to her personal request, leaving a trail of dusty footprints and her Jamie-scent, you sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the closed door.</p><p>Your room seems full of darkness without her presence at your side. Full of emptiness.</p><p>You spend your night lying huddled and shivering in the vast bed of your bedroom. Your feet are icy, your knees drawn up, your head sideways on the pillow. In front of you the arctic waste of stretched bedsheet, an infinity of cold fabric. You know you can't warm it up. You know you are directionless. You know you are lost.</p><p>Eddie's hand stretched from under the bed and you close your eyes, tight, and will him to disappear.</p><p>You do your best not to think about Jamie – her eyes and the way she shifted them to your mouth when you talked. You try not to think of her voice, a raspy voice, a sneer, a spit, a gentle whisper.</p><p>(You try your best not to think about her four top buttons undone, her bared shoulders, the way her curls looked so soft in the dim light of the yellow lamps. You do your best not to imagine what her skin would feel like under your palms if you run your hands under her shirt).</p><p>You flung one arm across the bed, grasping the sheets, your fingers clutching as if for dear life.</p><p>You toss and turn. You experience dread, the same dread you felt after seeing Jamie for the first time, your dreams coming true right before your eyes, curly and snarky and incredibly soft.</p><p>Eddie's ironic presence is like a cold shower on your overheated lust and the burning in your chest subdues, quiets down, though not enough to make him go away. You cannot lie to yourself, and as a result, can't lie to the shadow of your dead fiance.</p><p>His blinding blank stare is there, fixed on you, accusing you of something you haven't had the pleasure of doing. He is observing your failures, suspended in the air.</p><p>You close your eyes.</p><p>//</p><p>You're not dreaming about Jamie, nor do you dream about her shadow, the one who used to comfort you when life got tough. In your dreams you wonder if her absence is the direct result of her closeness, but you cannot say.</p><p>Instead of Jamie, you dream about ghosts moving in the attic, right above you. you dream long dreams, of drowning, and of horses and of magnificent sister with eyes sharp like daggers and a plot.</p><p>You dream of war, nothing real. The war in your dreams is fantastic and fast, though the fear is there when you wake up. You dream of deep water and hot fire, and of disintegrating villages, their fragments strewn about.</p><p>You dream of pursuit and escape, of fleeing hand in hand with a dark figure you don't recognise. You dream of burning buildings, of stubbled earth in which the frost begins to set it, of dark lines in the horizon, distant woods.</p><p>You dream Eddie is back from the dead, and he doesn't know why you're looking at him with such alarm. It's normal, in your dream, to have him breathing next to you, smiling his dopey boyish smile. But even in your dream you know he's dead and it's a cause of some confusion.</p><p>When you wake up there is nobody there with you. Your left arm is asleep, twisted under your body. Your heart is hammering almost painfully as if you've been running.</p><p>//</p><p>The morning is brisk and fair, wild geese fly south somewhere in the distance, creaking like anguished hinges. There is a mist outside on the lawns, and the path is still slippery.</p><p>You make yourself a cup of tea, half-asleep and in your sleeveless nightgown. It's still early, you have another couple of hours to sleep before it will be absolutly necessary to wake up.</p><p>In the cold side-parlour, Jamie is sleeping a child-like sleep, quiet and deep. Your heart lurches in your chest to this intimate scene. The blanket had inched down and you can see she didn't bother changing her clothes. Her shoulders are bare and there is a red line on her arm, where the blanket dug into somewhere along the night, leaving a small crease in her tanned skin.</p><p>The day brightens and brightens and when you enter Miles' room, a smile plastered on your face, ready to start the day right (the image of sleeping Jamie still fresh in your mind), Miles is already dressed. He's standing by the window, hands inside his pockets and his too-old-for-his-face smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.</p><p>"Once we find Flora," he says quietly. "Let's make a day of it."</p><p>"What do you mean 'find Flora'? isn't she in her room?" And you know he knows where she is but you don't ask.</p><p>Miles doesn't tell you.</p><p>//</p><p>You don't bother with a coat, even though it's cold and the grass is covered in mist. The mist is less threatening when you're actually in it and it gives you the illusion of being able to walk through a solid barrier.</p><p>Dripping grasses brush your legs, the air smells of leaf mould and damp wood, of wet cabbages, of sick flowers from the garden. It's an autumn smell at the end of spring, slow combustion.</p><p>You breathe it in as you walk, fast fast faster, through the yard. You don't know for sure if you'll find Flora there, but you have feeling she'll turn up at the lake. The hateful thing she talks so much about – her personal childish nightmare – the cause of her suffering.</p><p>You breath the hot scent of water, heart hammering like thunder, on the verge of panic. Flora is standing there by the shore, shoeless, in her pink pajamas.</p><p>"Flora!"</p><p>She makes a sort of sleepy crooning, meditative humming.</p><p>"Flora!"</p><p>Her eyes are fixed on the farther shore, empty and grey as it is. You grab hold of her and squeeze as you lift her from the ground. She rises perilously into the air. For a moment you think she might still be asleep, but then she lets out a shriek and she thrusts, kicking and punching at you, screaming at the top of her lungs.</p><p>You carry her to the house. Flora is a curious little animal in your arms, inconsolable, slippery, and stronger than her tiny frame would suggest.</p><p>Inside the house, Hannah is nowhere to be found. Flora keeps kicking like crazy, tiny and thin in your hands but strong enough to leave a nasty bruise on your upper thigh.</p><p>"Hey, hey!" Jamie is running out of the kitchen. Her eyes are sleepy but her face is alert. She's still not wearing any shoes. "What's this, then?"</p><p>It's a teamwork, getting Flora up in her room. Your forehead is damp with sweat and Jamie has earned a bruise on her cheekbone, a dark mark that stains her face like angry evidence of a morning turned wrong.</p><p>"I'm so sorry," you say in a hushed whisper when the doctor made his friendly enter and already smiling down at Flora. Flora, who is quiet now, exhausted and sleepy.</p><p>"No problem." Jamie smiles a soft smile, a tender little stretch of lips that makes her eyes shine. "You alright, Poppins?"</p><p>"Yeah," you attempt a smile because Jamie deserves one. You're still a little breathless from the running and the team activity of trying and calming Flora down. "Yeah, I'm okay. Are you?"</p><p>"I'm fine".</p><p>(Jamie, you notice in a sort of sad realisation, is always fine).</p><p>You smile.</p><p>"Thank you." You say.</p><p>Jamie makes a dismissive shrug. "Anytime," is her predictable answer, which you know to be true.</p><p>Your smile grows wider (you pretend not to notice Eddie's burning stare in the reflection of the small mirror on the wall, right behind Jamie's shoulder).</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie sits back in her chair, smug as a woodchuck for being able to rise blush in your cheeks, her eyes glittering with pleasure. She sucks happily on her cigarette and lets the smoke swirl around her head in a misshapen cloud. Then she sips on her tea.</p><p>The clouds are high and windblown, and your heart is pinching you. the sunlight is warm. Jamie's smile is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.</p><p>You've been talking for hours. Flora is fast asleep in her room, as the doctor instructed. Miles asked very politely to stay in the kitchen with Owen, who was delighted to have him as his companion for the day. Hannah's eyes teared up at the sentiment and Owen's smile grew so big it almost split his face in two.</p><p>"Alright," Jamie cooed in your ear. "Have a smoke with me, Poppins?"</p><p>"That's a good idea," Hannah's smile was so big it almost matched Owen's. "It's good for you to take a break".</p><p>"Flora…" was your weak protest but you let them shoo you out of the house anyway, to Jamie's endless amusment.</p><p>Jamie's talking and you're listening. Then you're talking and Jamie is humming and nodding, like there is nothing better for her to do than sit and listen to your confused babbling.</p><p>She tells you about things that aren't personal, places and people, keeping her voice low and taunting and pleasant. Her voice flows out of her like air, a hoars sort of scratch, strong and wonderful; winter vines rustling, the sibilance of late spring wind in dry grass. </p><p>Her stories are funny and you find yourself laughing in a carefree manner. Jamie has a talent for teasing without mocking, even the bad guys in her stories. You tell her something about Iowa and your job as a teacher. She listens, asks questions only when you're done talking. Her questions leave you a little breathless and very flushed, though they are always respectful. You feel a little bit foolish, being flustered by her bright colourful eyes. You can't specify how, exactly, she makes you feel, but it's a mixed feeling, raw passion, and white-hot desire and something much softer, much more tender, a thing that's sneaking up on you, grabbing hold of you and before you know it you're falling and there is nothing you can do.</p><p>Jamie is laughing her throaty laugh and takes another drag of her cigarette. "Right above the only pub in Bly. Never been much for a fancy living".</p><p>You are transfixed, shocked. You are deprived of the ability to move. You have no recourse.</p><p>Jamie is laughing and you are laughing too.</p><p>//</p><p>You toy with the polaroid picture. The young couple looks dashing, like a fantastic duo. Like a fairy-tale king and queen. They look daring and full of life, though a little waxen.</p><p>You chew on your thumbnail as you look at them, staring into the camera, unaware of their future. The colours aren't very clear. There is a misty look to the photo as if they are seen through cheesecloth. They look ultra-real; citizens of an odd half-country, lurid yet muted, where realism is beside the point.</p><p>The afternoon is brighter than it is ought to be. The white sunlight filling in shafts through the gaps in the heavy drapes all over the house, refusing to darken. The kitchen smells like vegetables and luke-warm soup and because Jamie is sitting right next to you by the table, it also smells like hot metal and soft smoke and smoldering cloth and weed.</p><p>Jamie is drinking wine. You keep chewing on your fingers. You've made yourself bleed earlier, so you move to another finger, to a rough corner right at the top of the tip.</p><p>Jamie smiles and you feel as if your stomach vanishes.</p><p>By the stove, Hannah makes a comment which Owen returns in kind and both of them are laughing.</p><p>The sun is losing altitude. It's darker now. You stare at the polaroid photo, down on the kitchen table in front of you. There is wind blowing through the leaves of the trees outside, ruffling the branches.</p><p>The phone rings makes you jump, but it's nothing compared to your first glimpse at <i>Story Time</i>. The kids look happy, Flora has a trace of blurriness on her face, but it smooths over once she starts talking. Miles is happy until he's not, his face falls and his voice is an iron scratch, sarcastic and mean. He's staring blank-eyed through the floor.</p><p>"And then," Miles' voice is ominous. Dark. Eerie. "Claude came back… so excited. But they had forgotten him, you see. And their strings. They laughed when he said he'd made them. They laughed at him. And he was… so sad. But they kept laughing – " Miles' voice rises. He turns to you, small and angry, eyes fixed on you, brows drawn together.</p><p>"These stupid puppets!" Miles yells. "<i>These stupid puppets, who had forgotten</i>! So, he pulled on their strings-"</p><p>Miles doesn't yell anymore. Now, his voice is quiet, almost a whisper. A trace of grief on his face. His eyes are far away, gazing into memories none of you as his audience has access to.</p><p>"And it hurt".</p><p>There is a pregnant silence when he doesn't go on. You watch him from your sit, Hannah is facing him, Jamie glances behind her shoulder to get a better look. Owen opens his mouth, to protest, or to ask a question.</p><p>A shiver runs through you and for the second time tonight, the phone rings.</p><p>//</p><p>Owen's car descending into the night, his ashen face imprinted into the back of your eyelids.</p><p>Hannah says, "I'm going to light a candle." And her voice floats in the night air, an obscure message, a cloud of smokey breath.</p><p>The air smells like dirt and dust and cigarette smoke, though nobody is smoking.</p><p>Jamie kicks the small stones on the pathway.</p><p>You don't know what to do, so you follow her to her truck, a huge beast, battered and green, parked askew.</p><p>You're walking by Jamie's side, eyes on her, Jamie's stare on the ground before her. She has her hands shoved deep inside her pockets. It's cold, but both your jackets are open. You don't have enough heart to make yourself feel more comfortable tonight, not while knowing Owen's world has shattered into a million little pieces.</p><p>There is something you need to tell Jamie; something important and pressing, something that cannot wait. It has to do with old dreams and new feelings and the warm fire she erupts in your chest whenever she looks at you.</p><p>"I'm so glad – " you say instead, too much of a coward for big declarations. "you've stayed."</p><p>Jamie's eyes search yours. She too has a strange look in her eyes and something like joy and something like fear and something like anticipation is clutching you by the throat, undistinguished from panic. You can see Jamie in the moonlight, the smokey air around her.</p><p>"I am too".</p><p>There is a glimmer to her, a sort of strange focus and you make the details into a woman you can't seem to make yourself stay away from.</p><p>Jamie; eye, mouth, hand – more than details, more than a warm feeling in your chest. She's an echo from another world, nothing so random as fate or destiny. She's Jamie and when you take her hand and press your thumb into her skin, rub it lightly across her palm, though tremulous, like a reflection on a shivering pool, she's solid and she returns a shaking squeeze.</p><p>It is not the time and not the place to hold her. You can't fix this memory with Owen's suffering.</p><p>A breeze blows over from the lake and the moment disappears into broken coloures, into ripples, then reforms into something else.</p><p>Jamie twists her mouth, a nervous expression, nothing like a smile. Then she opens her truck's door and gives you one last glance.</p><p>"Who the hell knew?"</p><p>The shimmering is her absence, and it appears to you as light. It's the simple nightly light by which everything around you is illuminated. Every stone and every brick and every window in the big house.</p><p>Eddie is standing there, no longer a shadow and no longer a reflection and no longer confined to reflective surfaces.</p><p>You scream.</p><p>//</p><p>There is a profound loneliness in bad memories, a sort of cloud over you that weighs you down.</p><p>You wake up with the image of Eddie lying on the asphalt with his neat sweater soaking in black blood and his broken glasses shattered on the ground, by his head.</p><p>You don't think about him after the first few minutes, instead you think about life in general. You think about Judy and you think that you need to call your own mother. Last time you tried she hadn't picked up. It was right after an unpleasant phone call during which she accused you of many nasty things, but you still hoped to hear her voice.</p><p>You told her you loved her. she hung up.</p><p>You are in full swing, heading to the phone in the foyer when Miles stops you. It's a small enough question, a childish request, but you find that after helping him you don't have it in you to call your mother, so you end up sitting in the kitchen with Hannah, listening to her telling a story about the town, about Owen's dead mother, about a time she no longer occupies.</p><p>//</p><p>The knock on the door hammers you back to reality.</p><p>Jamie is stepping cautiously into your bedroom. She's wearing a black tight dress and a black velvet jacket. The jacket and the dress look sharp, vibrant, nothing like your flagrant black cocktail dress. She wears black elegant boots to match and dark pantyhose, transparent and dotted with flowers.</p><p>You gasp, the image of her leaving you breathless. "Oh!"</p><p>Jamie's mouth twists into her trademark troublemaker's smile. In her black dress and brushed hair, she looks slender. Almost willowy. She looks too tender to be real.</p><p>"You look…!"</p><p>"I can scrub up when I need to".</p><p>She has a glossy, rubbery, slightly foreign look to her. She leaves you breathless in high-waisted jeans or her usual denim overalls, but this look is exquisite, unusual. Her hair is done up in balanced curls, falling slightly over one eye. The boyish, almost vulgar manner is gone, and Jamie slips into your room, self-conscious and bouncy. You notice, with a dry-mouthed pleasure, that the swagger is still there, hinted on her hips.</p><p>"It's eh… it's quite a dress," Jamie smooths her palms on the back of her thighs and sits on her hands, watching you carefully with incredulous astonishment, trying very hard not to stare.</p><p>"Yeah," you feel like a poisonous cake, or like a dark clown. "It's the only thing I had in black. I – I hate it".</p><p>Jamie's lips draw into a thin line and you wonder if she's trying very hard not to laugh at you right now. She cocks her head to the side, eyes sliding up and down your too-short-too-marvelous a dress.</p><p>"Does look a <i>bit</i> like you tryna scandalise the village," she says and she's teasing but she isn't laughing. Her tone is easy. Confident. "Can't say I fault the general principle," and she bows her head in a show of respect, the crooked smile still tugging at her painted lips.</p><p>"Yeah, I just don't want to let Owen down".</p><p>Jamie must catch something hidden in your tone because she says, "He won't mind. Honestly, you don't have to go if you don't want to".</p><p>You almost sob with relief. "Really?"</p><p>Jamie shrugs gently, all this time her eyes never leave your face, like she's searching for something, interpreting your little quirks in earnest, easy and attentive and soft. It's a wonderful sort of feeling, having Jamie read you like an open book. She's solid and consistent, but not stationary. She's everything Eddie was supposed to be.</p><p>"Said as much. Was pretty clear"</p><p>"Oh, that's a relief," you sigh and then you spill the worry that's been sitting in your chest all morning in a breathy sort of gasp. Jamie, beautiful and vigilant and alert, furrows her eyebrows and moves slowly towards you, her strides are soft, her eyes are watchful like she's afraid any sharp move will send you flying.</p><p>You're gnawing on your finger, and you glance sideways, away from her sinful eyes.</p><p>Jamie moves toward you with a slight frown. She slips her hands around your waist without fully pressing into you. It's sweet and hot and breathtaking, the way she touches you, so light and gentle. Jamie holds you, her thumbs tracing meaningless circles through your dress. She leans back and ducks her head, folding to catch a better look at your face.</p><p>"Hey, Poppins," she holds you at arm's length, studying your face. "It's your day off," she looks substantial and a little quizzical, one eyebrow cocked, lower lip thrust a little out, upper lip curved in her trade-mark lopsided smirk. She's on the verge of laughter and her eyes whisper gentle reassurances, as if at some secret, dubious joke.</p><p>Up close, you notice that Jamie had painted a very thin line of black mascara around her eyes and her hair's combed into a shiny crown, brown painted gold. There is a delicate silver trip around the edges of her jacket.</p><p>"I promise, I don't need you to be my date to Owen's mum's funeral." It's a small cherishing attention that makes your eyes water.</p><p>Jamie laughs and you have to laugh too, a wave of calmness washes over you. She has a vice grip on your waist, palms hot against the thin fabric of your dress. It's intoxicating, having her so close, having only one layer separate your own skin from hers.</p><p>Jamie keeps her hands on you, light and tender.</p><p>"Yeah," you sigh small and thankful, almost a gasp. A panicked chuckle. "Okay. Then, can you help me get this thing off?"</p><p>You know you take her by surprise by her panicked retreat. "Blimey!"</p><p>Jamie tries very hard to brush it off as a joke, clears her throat, doesn't jump away. Unlike Eddie, and unlike so many other people in your life, Jamie doesn’t make you feel dumb or jeopardized. You're not a sheep and she is not a wolf, she doesn't corner you. Instead, she gazes at you, equal and scared and so young you have a stupid urge to tell her you meant what you said, funerals and other obligations be damned.</p><p>You feel flaccid and crepey-skinned, like a deflating balloon. At the same time, you feel magnificent, like an admired performer on stage, like someone very dear to Jamie's heart.</p><p>(Jamie has a school-girl blush high on her cheeks).</p><p>"No, seriously." You let out a laugh, make sure she knows you mean no harm. "The, ah… the zipper," you wave your fingers behind your back, over your shoulder.</p><p>"Right," Jamie says and clears her throat again. She moves cautiously behind you, fingers twisting.</p><p>Jamie's hair is waved down over one eye and you miss the glimmer of her stare. Jamie's voice is like a sultry groan and you know she can see halfway down your back when she pulls the zipper. It's the full expanse of your naked back because you're not wearing a bra.</p><p>The back of her knuckles graze your skin by accident just as the dark figure appears in the crack of the mirror, a small sloth not covered by the striped blanket you draped over it some time ago, when you first moved in.</p><p>You gasp, high and frightened and sudden.</p><p>"Did I pinch ya?" Jamie's voice is concerned when you yelp and you cannot explain what just happened without sounding insane, so you just huff a sort of dismissive humorless laugh she doesn't bite.</p><p>"No! I'm sorry".</p><p>You don't want to go to the funeral, but after Jamie leaves, a forceful joke on her lips, you feel alone. Alone and therfore neglected. You stand there, in the middle of your room, your dress falling from your shoulders, and you stare at nothing as if you have a broken heart.</p><p>The sky is overcast. The clouds are dingy grey and sag down in clumps like the stuffing from a saturated mattress. It drizzling lightly and you need to go check up on the kids. Even though it is your day off, as instructed by Henry, all the way from London, you feel bad for leaving them to their own devices.</p><p>You change your clothes to a comfortable feeling jeans and a t-shirt and you check the window to see if it's still raining. You stand there, looking over and down, at the slate-coloured ground and the rolling grass, like tiny waves.</p><p>In the distance, a single figure is moving out of sight abd you really ought to check on Flora and Miles.</p><p>//</p><p>The day drags on. Without Jamie, the house seems bigger, emptier. You scold yourself for this sort of nonsense. Jamie is usually too occupied in the garden at this time, putting in as much work as possible before supper. Jamie is not a device to entertain you, certainly not with Owen's grief so evident even though he isn't here.</p><p>(<i>It's all in your head</i>, you tell yourself. <i>It's not real</i>)</p><p>(But Jamie is real and you miss her).</p><p>//</p><p>"Hey, you lot." Jamie walks diagonally across the kitchen, tired looking, her shoulders slumped.</p><p>Jamie's like a breath of fresh air and you gulp, sucking on her presence like a nicotine addict on a butt of a discarded cigarette. Like an alcoholic on the last drop of liquor.</p><p>Jamie is white and gold, dark curls waving around her head, face pale against the black of her clothes. Her voice, familiar and soothing, like liquid rope, hard and soft and intertwining in a raspy sort of chuckle.</p><p>Jamie manages to swagger on high heels on her way to the table, her stride a curious swing of self-consciousness mixed with the innocent absence of a woman who doesn't fully grasp just how stunning she is.</p><p>"Hello!" Flora, too curious and too jumpy throughout the day is the picture of sweetness.</p><p>Jamie drags a chair to the table, where you're engaged with the children in peeling a bowl of potatoes for a shepherd's pie, under Hannah's supervision.</p><p>You stare and you catch her staring too, something blooming in your chest. It's not just in your head, or at least not only in your head. Jamie's eyes, magnetic and daring, search for you all over the house.</p><p>She doesn't shy away when you catch her staring, only smirks and removes her earrings and shoes.</p><p>Despite Eddie's unwanted appearance, and an incident that leaves you flustered and tearing, scared right up to the tips of your fingers for confusing reality with the trace of dark shadows of another, more mysterious world, the evening is pleasant. Owen talks through the lump in his throat and the hours go without names, without thinking. Words are exchanged but the words are not essential, they are not required.</p><p>You drink a glass of wine which lights your cheeks in a red flush.</p><p>'Miss Clayton?" Miles hasn't touched his food yet. His hands are folded between his knees, stubborn and mature.</p><p>"Hmm?"</p><p>"I think I ought to be allowed a glass of wine".</p><p>Next to you, Jamie stifles a laugh. You try very hard not to grin around a mouthful of wine.</p><p>"You know," you say as you swallow, the cool drink burning pleasently down your throat, heating your chest. "I disagree".</p><p>You're good at reading the children's moods by now. Miles frowns, then his face smooths. It's one of his moods, you can tell, where he tries to be more like the adults, where he speaks more mature, where he tests you limits.</p><p>He holds himself differently, shoulders thrust back, chin jerked up. You ready yourself for a battle.</p><p>"My mum used to water mine down," Owen swirls his wine glass, a gentlemanly attempt to stir the conversation back to safety. He has his stare fixed on Hannah, though he isn't talking to her alone. "Yeah," he sighs, a good smile on his face. "Gave me half a glass".</p><p>You're a little tipsy and very very tired.</p><p>"My mum too," you say and you realise it's the first time you volunteered such an intimate detail about your previous life to someone who isn't just Jamie. "except without the water".</p><p>Owen chuckles. Jamie sends you an amused smile, which you return. She presses her fork into her sheperd's pie, smashes it into an unrecognizable mash, and happily wolfs it down.<br/>
Her silky black dress shines in the yellow light of the kitchen.</p><p>(<i>Yes,</i> you think, happy and buzzing with excitement. <i>Eat. You're too skinny and too small for your own good. Your big heart needs some space between your ribs. Eat.</i> Then you pull away in horror. You sound like Judy O'Mara).</p><p>But Miles is not having it and after he slams his fist against the table, it's a mess. You raise your voice, alone syllable on your lips, not angry but with harsh resolve.</p><p>you leave the kitchen behind Flora and a raging Miles, you hear Jamie's quiet chuckle of approval, and Hannah's soft hum.</p><p>"I do like this young woman," she says.</p><p>//</p><p>"We're all outside," Jamie says as a way of greeting, when you descend the stairs. She has a huge coat around her the colour of mustered and she's wearing her combat boots.</p><p>"And you're joining us".</p><p>Then she produces your purple coat from behind her back and holds it for you to step in.</p><p>//</p><p>You pull the plaid blanket tight around you. it has a brackish odour, like a salt marsh at low tide, dry fear, and anticipation of people.</p><p>The world is dark as oil outside the ring of light the bonfire casts and Jamie smiles her tight-lipped smile, her conspiring smirk, and leads you away.</p><p>Jamie pats the sofa and you sit by her. It's easy, being tired and small next to her. Jamie doesn't expect you to have all the answers. She doesn't care to have you scared and lost next to her. She doesn't so much as comment on the ruined state of your fingers.</p><p>With her, you feel calm. You have nowhere to go, nowhere to run. You know next to nothing about her, but you know she understands the full meaning of being lonely. What truly lies behind the sounds that form <i>helpless</i>.</p><p>Jamie demands nothing of you. She takes nothing. The risk and profit is all in your head. With her by your side, breathing slowly, waiting patiently, you don't think of the future. You are not forced at spearpoint into the present tense, you simply enjoy it without any further thought.</p><p>Here. Now. With her.</p><p>"I'm not gonna ask if you're alright," she says and her voice rises at the end of the sentence. Not a question, you realise, just her way of dragging syllables. "So, what's wrong?"</p><p>Her actual question is cut short, abrupt. The sounds are all there but she trims the words mercilessly. You don't know when you started to think of this accent as comfort. As a possible home.</p><p>You fall into a stammering explanation. You throw it over her like a heavy load and she doesn't run away. She doesn't fly screaming. Her eyes are soft and she murmurs gently 'I'm so sorry's which she actually means.</p><p>//</p><p>There is time where even the strongest ice crack, under the right pressure. Having Jamie sitting so close to you, looking at you with this particular softness, this particular hunger, this particular need, is what cracks you open. Just a tiny thing. Enough to send you flying her way.</p><p>"I know how it feels like," Jamie starts to say slowly. "It feels like you can't find your – "</p><p>You barely recognise the look of alarm that crosses Jamie's face when you surge forward. Blood pounds in your ears.</p><p>Jamie's coat is slippery under your palm as you dig your fingers in the cold fabric and pull her closer.</p><p>The kiss is a stolen kiss, a feverish thing cooked up for days in your stormy mind, inside your burning chest. It's something you dreamed of doing, something like hardness and snatched attention and Jamie tastes like wine and cigarettes and a hint of mint, a pleasant taste you won't be able to get rid off for days to come.</p><p>You kiss her and she moans slightly. Your eyes roll back in your head and she cradles your face, tender and soft and steady.</p><p>"You sure?" She whispers and you nod you nod you nod.</p><p>(Your eyes still search for the familiar dark figure. For the blinding lights instead of his eyes, for the fearful cold dread that settles low in your chest whenever you have him too close).</p><p>(When you don't find him you say, "Yes").</p><p>You say it like a dare and Jamie's smile is everything like sunshine. Everything like spring.</p><p>"Thank fuck." She murmurs and then she pushes forward and crashes her lips against yours.</p><p>Jamie's kiss is a knee-trembling, heart-stopping, pleasure-sweeping thing. Her lips move against your mouth, hard and soft and amused, her smile is too big but the urgency makes her push harder, kiss deeper, press closer.</p><p>Your arms flail a little and you settle them around her. One of your hands grab at her waist, to steady yourself or pull her closer or both at once, the other creeps up to her collar.<br/>
You hang unto her, not willing to let go.</p><p>Jamie has one arm wrapped securely around your shoulders, the other at your jaw and sliding <i>up</i>. Your heart skips a beat.</p><p>She is unbelievably soft despite the fact that the kiss is almost rough at first. It soon slows down to something more gentle, more affectionate, and Jamie's thumb rubs circles at your cheekbone.</p><p>You keep your hold on her until a sharp light pierces your eyelids and you gasp, jumping back at the sight of Eddie's dark ghost peering over Jamie's shoulder.</p><p>"Okay," Jamie is nodding, moving away, as far away as the small sofa will allow her. "Right!" She huffs, clears her throat, tugs at the collar of her coat.</p><p>"I don't know what to…" you breathe out. You feel panic taking over you when you notice the look on her face. "I don't know – I don't know what to s- say…"</p><p>"Just forget about it. It's my fault. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, just…" Jamie's breathless and confused and she's already stepping back from you. You have trouble thinking straight, the sting of Jamie's kiss still on your swollen lips, and she keeps talking.</p><p>You want to say something, you need to say something and Jamie is already folding nervously the blanket, fidgeting, refusing to meet your eyes.</p><p>"Jamie." It's a pitiful whine, but it makes her turn to you.</p><p>Jamie's eyes are hurt and wet with unspilled tears. There is anger in them, but not at you. You know this look of self-loathing all too well. You've been seeing the same look in your eyes for almost thirty years.</p><p>Jamie's hair is a mess, a strand of brown curly hair falls on her face. She smiles, but her smile has no warmth behind it. It's a grimace she tries very hard to conceal behind fake cheerfulness. It hurts you to see this smile on her face.</p><p>"You were just telling me. Literally telling me that you weren't up for this," she's breathless and she gestures at the space between the two of you. She's looking at you the same way she's been doing for weeks now and you can't register enough presence of mind to speak. To explain.</p><p>You move your hand to grip her coat at her arm and your words die in your throat at the hurt look in her eyes. Suddenly, you feel hollow.</p><p>Touch comes before sight, before speech. It's the first language and the last. It always tells the truth.</p><p>You want to take her hand and guide it to where you want her, but Jamie is far away and you are trembling.</p><p>Jamie springs to her feet. She looks both ecstatic and devastated. You watch her bite on her bottom lip, stepping back, away from you.</p><p>"Just forget about it. Another time, maybe," she chuckles and it stings, her broken half-laugh. "Another night, <i>maybe</i>"</p><p>And you've always been very good at playing pretend, but you can't muster enough courage to return her smile. You're not sure you can forget the bumping of mouths, her smiling too much to kiss properly, the moan she let out when your lips met for the second time, real and strong, or the way her hand had tangled in your hair.</p><p>Jamie is slipping away. You could beg for her to stay, stay, and indulge in your emotions. You want to call out to her, keep living forever in a single moment, sprout poetry out of both ends, about her hands that burn and lips that light and mouth that drains your cup. You want to haul at the moon.</p><p>Time is running out on you. You have nothing to lose.</p><p>//</p><p>Your body is on fire. Your chest is warm and burning and you can still feel Jamie's lips as they moved against yours, soft and warm and <i>right</i>.</p><p>You put a hoodie over your nightgown and walk down to where the bonfire is still smouldering. You take a sip from the wine and it's bitter but you keep drinking.</p><p>Your step closer to the fire. The fear says No, you can hear Eddie's voice in your head, pleading and crying and telling you he loves you. You know that if you do everything in the right order if you think of nothing else, just Jamie and Jamie's hands on either side of your head and Jamie's mouth pressed impossibly tight to yours and Jamie's smile bumping clumsily against your mouth and Jamie Jamie Jamie… your sacrifice will be excepted.</p><p>When you're certain you've guessed what is required, you add another stick of wood to the fire, careful not to smoke it. You take Eddie's broken glasses from your pocket, hoping you will be able to burn them.</p><p>You weight them in your palm, his last final thing you must discard. You don't think of it, just drop it into the fire, into the alter, it may not melt but it will at least be purified, the blood will burn off.</p><p>Everything from your history must be eliminated, the circles and the arrogant glasses he liked so much.</p><p>From the other side of the world, Eddie's ghostly shadow is watching you.</p><p>"It's just you and me." You tell him somberly. He is no god and no demon, he is no devil with horns. He's just a scrap of someone you once used to know. Someone you mistakenly thought of as your best friend.</p><p>(Best friend, you think with fondness, dark curls, and crooked smiles and a whispered <i>'you sure?'</i> dancing in your mind's eyes. A best friend is not someone who clings as hard as they can, but someone who makes sure it's safe to let go).</p><p>You were a coward. Now you must not let him keep haunting you.</p><p>"It's her," you tell his silent ghost. "It's always been her. I should have told you sooner".</p><p>He stares at you, blinding and angry, burning along with his last remains.</p><p>//</p><p>The sun is sinking on the horizon, the world is bright orange with long shadows, the sunlight is broken and sharp like fire, painting the world in soft colours.</p><p>The sky is pleasantly blue with some grayish-pink clouds.</p><p>When nothing is left intact and the fire is only smouldering, you leave. You carry your wounds back to the house, shut the door behind you, and you ready yourself for a new day.</p><p>When you wake up in the morning, you have a headache and you know he's gone. Finally gone back into the earth, the air, the water, wherever he was meant to be when you first summoned him by a fault. By mistake.</p><p>The rules are over.</p><p>You can do anything now.</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie is there in the morning. Real and dangerous and beautiful as ever. She has her hands buried deep in the soil, a work of art. You watch her from a safe distance, working, tanned body and washed hair waving like scarves. She's pretty, even from afar, even with her face dirt-caked and streaked with mud, skin grimed and scabby, tired looking.</p><p>More.</p><p>You laugh quietly and the noise comes out breathless and panicked. She can't hear you and she didn't come in to say her usual 'good mornings' so you let her work and go back to the house and the kids and the safe activities that don't involve thinking.</p><p>You refuse to be a victim. You have a choice. You made up your mind. Now that there aren't ghosts and aren't dead boyfriends and aren't constant rising panic, you think you can try and power your way to something you really want.</p><p>You're not powerless. It was a lie you've been told, a lie you so stupidly believed, and it took a sharp-tongued, soft-eyed gardener to show you the truth.</p><p>The wordgames of winning and losing are finished. At this moment there are no others but you and Jamie (withdrawing, hurt, impossible Jamie).</p><p>You try to think of something to cheer her up, to show her you know you've been acting strange, to let her know it had nothing to do with her. You know you hurt her, that much was evident, and her silence is painful and distant.</p><p>You need to apologise. To take responsibility.</p><p>You make a clumsy plan (her silence is different to Eddie's silences. It's full of meaning, pregnant heavy air, lingering looks, twisting mouths).</p><p>(You hope you know what you're doing).</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie is sitting in the glasshouse, outback. She has the remains of soil sticking to her boots and her face is smeared with dirt. A blackened plant is sitting on the table in front of her, its leaves dangling, green and sad.</p><p>From inside the house comes howling and a rattle of slam. Hannah's voice raises in thwarted rage, then the defiant yells of Miles. You don't have much time, it wouldn't be fair to leave Hannah with the children when they are nursing such defiant moods, but you still have to try.</p><p>Jamie is sitting on a straw chair, hands dangling from her knees, out of work but not wanting to go inside. Her eyes and her scowl takes bitter stock of you and your plan crumbles to nothing.</p><p>It's a good thing you have Hannah's carefully arranged plate for Jamie, covered in aluminum foil. At least you have half an excuse to ward off her hurtful glare.</p><p>It's all wrong. The way you talk and the way you move and the way you act around her these past few days. she doesn't make it easier and her jaw is set tight whenever she stumbles upon you. you don't push it, you just smile an apologetic smile and move aside.</p><p>Though Jamie's eyes are not filthy, they lack their usual soft touch. Her shoulders are too far back even as she hunches forward, her chin too far up like she's holding herself from something unpleasant.</p><p>"Hi." You say.</p><p>"Hey." Jamie answers. You hear the pain and the lust mixed on her tongue. She doesn't offer anything further and you clear your throat. You try a cheerful approach.</p><p>You don't want to be mistaken for sniffing. You don't want her anger. You don't want her to think you're poking your scrubbed fingers into her life, don't want to ask questions she isn't ready to answer. You offer the plate, like a sacrifice, and hope against hope she didn't learn to hate you in these past few days.</p><p>Jamie nods. "Cheers".</p><p>Clipped. Short. Nothing to hang on to.</p><p>Your plan is stupid, nothing you can execute in a face of such failure. What you need is a different approach. You need to rummage for some backbone, though maybe not right now.</p><p>"Okay," you say far too loud and you wince. Jamie knits her eyebrows. "Have a good evening!"</p><p>"G'day, Poppins".</p><p>The nickname slips out. You can tell it takes her by surprise. You try one last time, before folding up and accepting defeat.</p><p>"Are you gonna start on the flower-beds tomorrow? Miles said he's like to help. If you do, I mean. Erm…"</p><p>There is smoothness, coolness, blankness on Jamie's face and it's all wrong.</p><p>"Not gonna be here tomorrow," she says with a shrug.</p><p>"Oh".</p><p>"Got myself a couple o' days off." A lifting of both eyebrows, a transparent stare of a double agent. A challenge.</p><p>You bite back all the foolish questions. Jamie is hurt and it's your fault. You have no right acting sad now, not with Jamie's pain so evident.</p><p>It's a few steps back, this blank-faced closed-off Jamie. There is no danger in her, not for you, but you spot all the small details that don't fit right in a face you've learned to be so open.</p><p>Back inside the house, you flop down on a chair. Miles has his arms around Hannah's waist, tears running down his cheeks. Hannah hugs him a good motherly hug. You raise your eyebrows in question but she just mouths '<i>it's alright</i>' and you nod.</p><p>Later, when Jamie has left with a tight smile and a 'alright, Poppins' that didn't do any good, you muster some courage and join Hannah for a cup of tea in the kitchen. Miles and Flora are asleep already, exhausted after a day of raging feelings and confusing changes.</p><p>"Is Jamie going away for long?" You ask and hope you don't sound too wistful. You hope the answer won't be something you'd have to pretend not to care deeply about.</p><p>Hannah smiles, her eyes are sad and calm. She pats the back of your palm languidly.</p><p>"Not at all," she says with a tight smile. "She'll be back Thursday morning".</p><p>You sigh a breath of relief.</p><p>"Oh, darling." Says Hannah, though it's not pitting.</p><p>//</p><p>You walk along the path, hoping you're not going to ruin everything. The past few days were tough. Owen is gone and Hannah has a look of a tortured martyr on her face, though she denies it.</p><p>When they ask, cautious and broken, you assure Flora and Miles that Owen didn't leave forever, he's just taking a small holiday to mourn his mum and regain his strength. They make grim faces and nod and Miles asks shyly if it's okay to draw him a picture to try and cheer him up.</p><p>It's early and cold. Jamie is back in the greenhouse, wearing thick washed-out overalls, her hair pinned messily about her head, away from her eyes. You have to take a moment not to blurt something stupid.</p><p>She's stunning.</p><p>(You steady yourself and nock on the glass door, a rattle that makes you jump).</p><p>"Don't usually see you this side of the eight AM." Jamie says as a way of greeting, cool and collected and nothing like surprised.</p><p>You clutch the two mugs harder. "Yeah, well… I – I knew, um. I know you start early on Thursdays so I, ah… I thought I'd bring you some coffee!"</p><p>There is some danger in such a cheerful approach with a hurt Jamie, and you are not sure how far she is willing to go with this act, but you are not about to back off now. You can only push forward.</p><p>"You Yanks and your coffee." (Not as far as you'd like her, it seems).</p><p>"You might like it." You chuckle, a breathy nervous laugh.</p><p>"Cheers".</p><p>You haven't examined your motives. It's her first day back after her abrupt holiday and you may not have any motives as such; desire is not a motive, and wanting to have her close to you isn't one, either. But it doesn't feel like you have much of a choice. Such extreme pleasure is also humiliation. It's like being hauled along by a shameful rope, a leash around the neck you're not in any hurry to get rid of. You resent this lack of freedom but the rope isn't the thick angry kind Eddie used to keep around your neck. It's silky and smells like Jamie and it seems like she's trying to stretch out the time between you, to ration you, to keep you at an arm's length.</p><p>She does it for your sake as much as her own. You understand this reasoning and you wish she wouldn't.</p><p>Your dance around her is thick and slow and painted awkward. You push and Jamie pushes back and you wonder if it would be less painful just to tell her everything. Not just about hidden ghosts and dead fiance's, but the way she makes you feel inside, the throbbing heart and the pooling heat and the burning sensation.</p><p>It's going to be painful, abnormal, but Jamie is worth it.</p><p>You tense forward.</p><p>Jamie's voice is slightly annoying, slightly teasing. You can hear the smile in her voice, though she doesn't let it appear on her face. She teases and you're too preoccupied with your own plan to see the trap she leads you so gracefully into until you're right in the middle of it and her eyes are burning holy into your skin.</p><p>"Poppins," she says and for now the quiet surrounds you, and her voice is giving you nothing. "You flirt".</p><p>In the end, there is no resisting. You need her for amnesia as much as you need her for remembering. You need her for oblivion. You need her for keeping yourself grounded. You are too impatient to play this game of tug. You enter the darkness of your own body, you forget your own name.</p><p>What you want is for Jamie to understand you motives, to realise you're not here to hurt her. You want her to know that with her, you exist without boundaries.</p><p>So you chase her. She pulls back, no longer hurt but still cautious, and you chase her. You can't let your fear get the better of you. It was your mistake, and as such, it is up to you to mend it, slowly and carefully, without leaving so much as a single hole for doubts to creep up.</p><p>"Fine," you are too close to her and her unique Jamie-smell fills your nose. You can barely think with her so close. "I don't like the way we left it".</p><p>"And how did we leave it?"</p><p>But you're done playing games and you're done keeping your head down you need her to understand that. You're here and you're not going anywhere, shadowy fiance's be damned.</p><p>"Wrong," you say. "And I wanted to start doing something right. So I thought I'd start with coffee".</p><p>Jamie's mouth twists. "You sure about that?"</p><p>You've been taught your whole life that romance is a place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out, not to show the life and the grunts and the snuffles.</p><p>But Jamie taught you different. Jamie doesn't want your pretends. She doesn't want an act. She looks at you open and wounded and she wants more. She offers more.</p><p>"There's a pub, in Bly, right?"</p><p>"There is." She says, leaving you the opening to take the conversation whichever way you please.</p><p>There is danger in her, that is true. She's looking too closely and she's seeing too much and you have yourself dwindle along. You know that she won't jump back (she didn't even after you told her about Eddie and the things you sometimes see in the shadows) and she looked at you empty and vulnerable and she offered everything.</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie puts her arms around you, carefully. She brushes her lips over the side of your neck, your throat, not the mouth. You shiver.</p><p>"We need to get inside," she says, whispering, her story still fresh in your mind, her eyes are still wet, glistening in the dark like stars. "Don't think I can wait much longer".</p><p>"I really want to kiss you," you say, also whispering, reckless desire spilling over logic. You're burning so hot for Jamie you're afraid you'll reduce the earth around you to black cinder. A crate of nothingness.</p><p>Jamie slides her arm around your waist as you go back to the house, a little clumsily, a little heavily, your bodies slow you down. halfway there Jamie turns and kisses you hard on the mouth, breathing heavy against your lips. You kiss her back, the distant dim lights of the house are a spot somewhere behind her, staining her in a magical sort of way.</p><p>You kiss again when Jamie closes the heavy door behind you and again on the second floor landing. This time Jamie's kisses are harder and needier, sliding her arms up your legs, up your waist. Her palms caress your breasts and she presses closer, pushes you to the wall.</p><p>You sway in place, your senses full of Jamie Jamie Jamie and nothing else.</p><p>When you're inside your bedroom, Jamie tumbles off her jacket, your arms are around her neck, your head and body arched backward as if someone's pulling down on your hair, giving Jamie's hot mouth access to your throat. Your hair has come unpinned, uncoiled, and Jamie smoothes her hands down it eagerly and impertinently and so so softly, the pale tapering swath of it, and you feel flames in her fingers, on her lips, not the single shimmering flame of a white candle, but the upside-down burn of the sun.</p><p>The room is dark and cold but Jamie is hot and vibrating and her front is flushed tight to yours. Jamie smells of soap and something dangerous, hot chocolate and smoke and desire.</p><p>You gulp air when she sucks a tiny bruise just under your jawline, making mewling sounds of concept. You wish for her to keep doing that. To never stop.</p><p>Then she moves away and sits slowly on the bed, eyes never leaving yours. You keep standing right next to the door, planted in place.</p><p>Jamie's eyes gleam.</p><p>"This alright?" She asks.</p><p>"Yes," you answer breathlessly, your heart in your throat. "Yes".</p><p>"Come 'er, then".</p><p>Although you know she wants you, you're having trouble believing what is happening. You move in a daze, pulse racing, your underwear soaked through. Jamie does this to you, with a single look and a single kiss and nothing more.</p><p>Your back is on the mattress, your head rests against your pillow, Jamie is right above you, innocent as plankton. Your hair spreads out around you and Jamie moves in fluid motions, hot skin and fond smile, and nervous eyes.</p><p>The world rotates, Jamie is holding your body down, her hand pounding between your slick thighs. Red flames and rays pulsing in you, from your joined bodies to every last nerve in your heavy limbs.</p><p>With Jamie deep inside you, there is no wrong form of you and you are soaking through, warm and wet and wanting.</p><p>Jamie dips her head, eyes shining and you throw your head back and moan. Your whines and whimpers don't go unnoticed. She accepts the hungry part of you as part of herself and when she comes up, your body is floating on the surface, spasming and trembling and electric with release and Jamie nudges gently against you, smiling and tired and spent.</p><p>"You alright?" She asks, always checking.</p><p>You shake your head. "Not yet".</p><p>Jamie is marvelous, naked and shining and shivering. She is glowing against your body. You suck on her skin, sourness, and sweetness piercing your mouth, teeth grazing her swollen flesh. You lick and search, tasting her on your tongue.</p><p>It's easy to coax her into arching her back and digging her fingers into your hair. It's easier to let her wanting spread on your fingers and chin, washing over you.</p><p>"Again," you say.</p><p>Jamie lies on her back, arching and grabbing a handful of your hair, whimpering quietly. Her eyes are shut and she's grinding her teeth to hold herself back. You don't want her holding back, so you double your efforts.</p><p>The earth cracks beneath your trembling fingers and Jamie comes a second time, so lovely, so openly, in your mouth.</p><p>You hold her for a long time, fingers soft and wrinkled. You hold her in your arms, tasting salty sweat on her upper lip. Jamie has her arms secured around you. She's wrapped around you, damp and smelling like cigarettes and fresh grass, like iron and flowers and sex.</p><p>Your feet go cold after a while but you don't let her go. She talks and her voice is clear against your neck, full of things you know she means, though they aren't as soft as you know they can be.</p><p>You duck your head into the crook of her neck, breathing hard. You're not sure, but you think she's singing.</p><p>Jamie's voice isn't designed for singing, which makes it better. She's having trouble holding a tune, but she sighs into you anyway, flimsy and silken and smokey and hoarse. Your heart's going hard in your chest. Her hands are everywhere at once.</p><p>She keeps singing, soft and anguished, cooing like a mourning dove.</p><p>You breathe in her smell, reassuring and familiar. You can feel her ribs under your fingertips. You trace the spaces between.</p><p>//</p><p>You are dizzy, voices, and light glaring from your belly. Pleasure squeezes your stomach. Jamie leans into you, bending over you, head pressed between your legs.</p><p>"Okay?" She checks.</p><p>"Yes," you moan, quiet and light-headed and laughing. "Yes".</p><p>Slowly, you unwrap yourself. Jamie unravels her own secrets. You drink each other with eyes and fingers and searching tongues.</p><p>Everything before you floats, melts, everything is made of water, even Jamie. In one smooth motion, there is no need for language, no need for words, and Jamie holds you in gentle strong arms for a long moment. You lean against her. Breathless.</p><p>When you touch her again, later that night, fingers trembling and mouth dry, you watch her arch her back and grip the sheets. It's a sight you will never get tired of. She breathes through her mouth, silent, your own breaths labouring, withheld, trying not to make any noise. Or not too much noise.</p><p>She digs her fingers into your shoulder, hard but still very gentle, not hard enough to bruise. You watch her pleasure and you think, this lustful sounds sound a lot like distress. Like someone's wounded.</p><p>You kiss her, because you want to and because her moans get increasingly louder. You don't want to wake the kids.</p><p>Jamie laughs when she comes again, a lovely tired sort of sound.</p><p>By the time the sun comes up, your muscles are jelly and the room is shimmering, glowing through the wood and plaster. You break out of your Jamie induced haze, bright and smiling, head against her shoulder.</p><p>//</p><p>You get up, separate again but somehow different. You pull your sweater over your head and shoulders and glance to the side. Jamie is still asleep, eyelids moving fast as she dreams.</p><p>You can hear the birds outside, crying and crying as if they have found an enemy or food. They are on the trees near your window and you walk toward it. You see the leaves swooping between branches. The air forming itself into birds. They continue to call.</p><p>Your head is full of Jamie. Practiced fingers dipping between slick thighs and skilled kisses on swollen skin, groaning and moaning and panting against your ear, as you touched her for the first time. Then, for the third.</p><p>On the lawn, there is a single small figure in familiar pink pajamas. She is standing there, her hand stretched out, her hair is long and loose, down between her small shoulderblades. She is turned half from you, and she's talking to someone you cannot see.</p><p>At first you feel nothing except a lack of surprise. This is where Flora always is these days. Then as you watch and it doesn't change, you're afraid. You're cold with fear. You're afraid there is something seriously wrong with this small soft child, gentle like a paper doll, like a burnt picture.</p><p>Jamie must sense your fear because she steers, jumping out of bed. She looks at you quietly, then at Flora, standing lonely in the tall grass. You can tell she knows something isn't right.</p><p>The birds cry again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Once, when you were small, when your father was already dead and your mother not there anymore, when you and Eddie's been friends for over a year, you cut your knee. Judy O'Mara scooped you up and put you on the counter, or sitted you on the big table in the dining room, you can't remember which. You were crying so hard you were howling and she gave you a cube of sugar to get you to close your mouth.</p><p><i>Tell me where it hurts, hon,</i> she said and you still remember how magnificent she looked to you. So strong and so present and so unlike your own mother. <i>Stop crying, darling. It's nothing bad. Now be a good girl and calm down. Show me where it hurts</i>.</p><p>But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop crying.</p><p>When you realise Rebecca Jessel isn't real, isn't blood and flesh and bone, you think you will never stop howling, never stop hurting, never stop crying. When Flora runs, you think you will never breathe normally again. When you see Peter Quint, you have no idea if you'd be able to survive long enough to save the kids. To say goodbye to Jamie. To make sure you're the only casualty.</p><p>//</p><p>You ease yourself out from behind the door, out of the attic, Flora's small hand in yours. You creep around the corner, then out into the hall, hand in hand, like children avoiding the grownups.</p><p>Behind you, there's a shout, of rage and horror and you're still not sure what the hell is going on. How did Rebecca Jessel materialised in front of you? Where did Peter Quint come from? But most importantly, Miles. Your mind is an endless well of suffering. Your heart beats against your ribcage with excessive force. Every beat has a frantic rhythm.</p><p>Every beat has a crazed name.</p><p>(Miles. Miles. Miles).</p><p><i>Something is wrong with Miles</i>.</p><p>You begin to run, Flora's fingers slippery in your palm. You pull her behind you, then you push her in front of you. That way, if something will come from the attic, you'd be the one they grab first. You hope it will earn Flora at least some time to get away.</p><p>A moment, really, can change everything.</p><p>You punch the lights off as you're going, turning it off behind you, in a false hope it will give you some advantage, though these people know the manor better than you ever will and it's hopeless.</p><p>You spent so much time in the corridors, in the tunnels and the doorways and the rooms, you run now like a mouse in a maze.</p><p>You push Flora, urging her on.</p><p><i>'Get her away from here,'</i> you can still hear Rebecca Jessel's voice urging in your ears, soft and pleading and so hopelessly broken. <i>'You get her as far away from this house as you possibly can'.</i></p><p>So this is what you're doing.</p><p>You're leading Flora from wall to wall, trying to stay quiet, and then down an abrupt, cramped staircase to the second floor. You're stumbling down the main stairs, Flora slow and scared, shivering from the cold. Her pace is slowing and as you burst outside, into the darkness, you're having trouble steering her in the right direction.</p><p>"What about Miles!" She's whimpering with fear, the panic and horror of it all cannot stop her capacity for tears.</p><p>"It's okay… It's okay. We gotta get out of here!"</p><p>You don't have enough presence of mind to hoist her up, lift her up, offer her more than your hands pushing at her back. The air around you has an awful smell to it, old and clotted and dusty. Old sweat and standing water and storm. There is no trace of fresh air outside and you taste it on your tongue, cough it out your throat.</p><p>"Where are we going?" Flora is crying, her voice rising to new heights.</p><p>"I don't know! Anywhere!" You're exposed to the curving road that leads to the main doors. You'll be easily spotted, clearly visible to any terror coming from behind.</p><p>You are having trouble thinking straight. The panic and the fear and the face of a dead woman are all a jumble of something red and unintelligible in your head, a mixture of primal need to survive and the knowledge this is not the first time the dead have been following you.</p><p>Briefly, you wonder if Flora will be safer away from you, but it's half a thought and nothing you dwell upon. Nothing you can actually go along with. You can't leave her. Miss Jessel, dead as she might be, was right. You need to take her as far away from the manor as possible.</p><p>"No! I don't like this game!"</p><p>"Shh!"</p><p>"I'm not leaving!"</p><p>"Flora!"</p><p>Out of Bly grounds, out of familiar territory, out to the village. You have to get Flora as far away as you can, though there is no car you can borrow and the village isn't near enough to reach by foot, not when Flora is twisting and turning and planting her feet in the ground. Not when she's screaming at the top of her lungs, tears rolling down her cheeks.</p><p>"You can't make me!"</p><p>"Shh! We gotta – "</p><p>"Miles!"</p><p>You can hear the people inside the house, feel the pudding on croaking floors, someone is coming, steady and deliberate and scary, searching for you. You're blind with fear, your ears thumping wildly in your chest, beating painfully against your ribcage. You try to push Flora, pull her into your arms, but she gasps and whimpers and screeches and it's all you can do turning around, crashing face-first into a tall dark figure you haven't noticed before.</p><p>For a brief moment, you feel a surge of relief flooding into your veins. You're not alone. Someone came to help you, Hannah or Owen or Jamie, though Hannah must be still inside the house and Owen doesn't have long hair and Jamie isn't tall enough to be mistaken for this figure.</p><p>You float on a rush of wild happiness, crazy and perfect and complete happiness that surges through you. Then something hard crushes your windpipe, your breath cut from your lungs and the figure pushes you back.</p><p>You lose balance, choking on iron fingers around your throat. There are shapes and colours dancing behind your eyes and you grip the hand that drags you back, keeps you just a few inches above the ground, pulling you back inside the house.</p><p>//</p><p>The air is nebulous. It has no shape. You can pass your hand right through it. And yet, there isn't enough of it and the force that has you tight around your neck is a thing of complete darkness, unaware of your inability to breath.</p><p>You make a sound, a scratching desperate sound, choking on your own tongue.</p><p>You had turned and you had moved and you tried to run, but something collided with you, fast and strong and trajectory and there is nothing you can do about it.</p><p>The agonising pain that shoots through you, lungs bursting with the need for oxygen, is something you cannot understand and the huge dark figure is dragging you behind it, ignoring your clawing fingers, your gasping screams.</p><p>"Grhh," you say. "krahh".</p><p>You scrap against the arm, you try to peel the fingers away from your skin, feeling like you might pass out every second now. Dark dots dancing at the edges of your vision, the world is a distant spot at the end of a dark dark tunnel.</p><p><i>Jamie</i>, you think with distant surrow. <i>Flora…</i></p><p>//</p><p>"It's you!" you scream, teeth chattering, every muscle in your body tense and frozen. "It's me! It's us!"</p><p>You can't remember how you got to the lake. You remember the growl, the sneer, then iron fingers closing around your throat. You remember you tried to scream, to fight the grasp, but you became hopeless and terrified and weak. Too weak to struggle earnestly, only clutch to the hand that dragged you through the house, eyes bulging, trying to think of something, anything, to help yourself, to stay alive. Anything to get you back to Flora, to make sure she's safe, and far far far away.</p><p>"It’s us…"</p><p>Now you are standing waist-deep in water. Cold, frightened, choking on ragged breaths.</p><p>"It's us…"</p><p>From the lake comes a monotonous sound, a growl or a sigh or a moan. A woman rises from dark waters, frightening birds from their trees and the small girl in her arms.</p><p>You grow sodden with fear, your skin crawling.</p><p>"It's us…" your voice is barely a whisper. Not a sound at all, just a breath of air cut in your throat. "It's us..."</p><p>The figure is glowing in a dull blue light, like a mystical corpse. The small creature in her arms, dressed in a soaked pink nightgown, is Flora.</p><p><i>No,</i> you think, lower lip trembling, unspilled tears making your world a distant blurred picture.  No. Anything but this. Anything at all. Just not this. Not this. Not Flora.</p><p>The figure reflects in the cool surface of the uninterrupted water of the lake and you hear her breathing, though there is no nose in her face, just a huge blind surface. Slowly and painfully she turns, shambling from the freezing water.</p><p>The creature is composed of flesh, but it's a featureless flesh, like a carving gone wrong. Her skin is pale and it stretches on her bones, smooth like a potato. A flesh of a breast minus the nipple.</p><p>She rises from the water and descended on to you, as you stand frozen in one place. For a split moment, there is no sound at all, just breathing and the soft waves of the lake. The gellatin creature is staring at you.</p><p>Why did you scream? You cannot remember.</p><p>Within your frozen body a gasp of air is building, a sort of scream you cannot let out. You are choking and your nose and mouth are closed. Your teeth are chattering, with fear as well as with cold.</p><p>You are obliterated.</p><p>//</p><p>She's very close now and you're almost done. She's very close and you know that when she reaches you, you'd have to let her in. It has always been your destiny. You cannot renounce her. You cannot send her back to the freezing waters. You cannot let her take Flora.</p><p>She has always been standing behind you in the mirror. You see it now. It was not Eddie's shadow you really feared, but this inky creature, this deformed figure, this once-upon-a-time woman. She is the one who has always waited for you around corners, around each and every turn along the way, her voice whispering the words, her undead hands stretched to you in a silent plea. She is the Lady in The Lake, the dark death, the tragic mother with flowing black hair and once-stricken eyes. The lady in the tower, waiting for her release.</p><p>Life, to her, is a curse she can no longer remember. How can you turn her back? How can you turn her down? She needs her freedom just like anybody else. She has been your reflection too long, you can have her as your reflection for the rest of your life, as well. At least now you know who you've been glancing at all this time.</p><p>Dark and scary and cold, but familiar. So damn familiar it's almost a relief.</p><p>She is a vortex. A dark vacuum. A space of nothingness in a world full of somethings. You were never able to be happy without her, you figure you can try it her way. Maybe it's time for you to stop trying to push her away. Maybe this is what you were missing.</p><p>In the back of your head, you hear Jamie's voice calling your name.</p><p>"Dani!" she's screaming herself hoars, too far to be any help. "Dani!"</p><p>But Jamie is not to save you. This is your story, and this is your choice, and this is your destiny.</p><p>You wonder, briefly, if welcoming the lady of the lake inside you mean certain death? Or the answer to a riddle? Something you must learn in order to live?</p><p>Only one way to find out.</p><p>//</p><p>From here on, you know, things must take a darker turn. Not because you already know the end, though you have a feeling you can guess it, but because there is something inside you and it's angry and painful and scary.</p><p>Jamie is by your side, clothes wet and eyes wild, clutching you so hard it hurts. She seems close to tears, scared out of her mind and when you cup your palm to her jaw, her skin is very cool and thin.</p><p>She doesn't seem familiar, and at the same time, she's Jamie. The same Jamie you've come to know better than anyone over a span of just a few months.</p><p>Jamie appears shrunken with terror, her hair, just like her clothes, is wet. Her face is ashen and fallen but at the same time, she looks translucent – as if little spikes of light are being nailed out through her skin from the inside, as if thorns of heavenly light are shooting out from her in a prickly haze, like thistle held up to the sun. It's a hard and strange effect. A divine effect. Something out of a fairytale.</p><p>Jamie has a strange look on her face, wild and desperate and hopeless. There is a flutter in the material around her, like the light about her is diming. She looks at you, looks through you, and you have no idea what she sees. All that is going under her eyes, around her mouth, is a tough expression you hate yourself for.</p><p>There is a terrifying glint in her eyes. A cold, rapturous light. Gleaming like steel.</p><p>She's standing in the water, reaching for you, eyes fixed on yours as if seeing you for the first time. You stretch your free arm to her and she closes her fingers around your elbow in a mechanic gesture that isn't even a full thought.</p><p>You whimper. You want her close, as close as possible, flushed against you if must. You long for her closeness, you thirst for her, hoping for her arms around you.</p><p>Your heart is hammering against your ribs. Such desires, at such a time, are in themselves despicable but there is nothing you can do about it.</p><p>Jamie reached for you and you stretch your arms to her and she has you in a hug, tight and safe and shaking.</p><p>You stretch your arms at her. She answers without a moment's pause. Simple as that.</p><p>You ask and she gives freely.</p><p>You're angry and thwarted and also helpless.</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie gathers you in her arms like silk, sinks into you with a sigh, a whispered word you don't catch but know its meaning. She's cool to the touch, her clothes are wet and faintly salty. She smells like sweet shampoo and hot skin and car leather seats. She smells like fresh grass. Like turned earth. Like home.</p><p>Jamie gathers you in her arms like you weigh nothing, holding your clothes.</p><p>"Shh," she murmurs, swaying in place. "Shh. It's okay. It's okay".</p><p>"Okay," you parrot after her, not sure what the word means.</p><p>Jamie has her arms around you. Flora is trapped between you and Jamie, arms wound around your neck.</p><p>"Shh," is Jamie's only lullaby.</p><p>You sink into her.</p><p>You sink into her.</p><p>You sink into her.</p><p>//</p><p>You keep your arms around Jamie even when she drags you out of the ice-cold lake, even when Flora sprints into Henry's arms, even when Owen grabs your waist to help and keep you up.</p><p>You don't let her go. You have to protect her, though you don't know from what, or how you will do this if the danger suddenly presents itself. All you know is you can't take your hands off of her and you're not planning on it.</p><p>So you keep your arms around Jamie, impromptu and born of desperation, but nevertheless, you do it. It might work in a time of need. And if it doesn't at least it affirms that both of you are alive. A different kind now, maybe, but still alive.</p><p>It's more than Owen has when he asks about Hannah.</p><p>//</p><p>You go to the window, looking outside, icicles like brownish tusks depend outside the glass, taking their colour from the bricks. You think of Jamie, of her eyes and body, and the way she holds you in her hands. You think of her name; electric aura circling it – a sexual buzz like blue neon, a soft, safe light encircles it.</p><p>Jamie isn't here at the moment, and you wonder where she went. Her clothes are wet and soaked with dirty lake water, and it's too cold to be wondering about.</p><p>You watch through the window, willing her to materialise; stepping into the room, sure and safe and smiling. Maybe not smiling, but with a blush. Maybe with too-wide eyes. Maybe with a shocked expression.</p><p>Jamie isn't shocked. Jamie isn't shaken. She's scared, but she's also too brilliant and too strong and too careful to let it show. Despite her trembling hands and terrified eyes, there is a sure line in her throat, and a fierce angle to her mouth; this all things you catch glimpses of at times of something complex and smirched and you wish she was here so you could put your arms around her and subdue the fear you both are feeling.</p><p>Something dark and painful moves inside your chest and you think it's better not to invite her in her absence, better to wait until she's actually here. Then you can make her up as she is.</p><p>You sit on your made-out bed and blow on your freezing fingers. You're no longer wearing your clothes. Instead, you're wrapped in a towel and a blanket, your hair's wet from the shower. Jamie steered you inside the house and made you get into the tub before disappearing, what feels like hours ago but might also be only a couple of minutes.</p><p>You sit and wait. Inside your chest, matching your movements, there is a shadow. Like an explorer, you find out this shadow, careful not to disturb. It's embedded in a flow of clear ice, a space of dark shadows. It's shaped like something you've already seen, small and scary and very dark. When you gently poke at it, an eerie glow comes from it, shining through you. What colour is that glow? Green as a thick forest, black as the jungle, with a yellow tinge to it, like absinthe. Like animals' eyes from around the bush. There are some dots of red in that glow. Red like blood. Like loss. Like the end.</p><p>You silently melt the ice around it. A large fire made from the new presence inside you springs up. You move back, not exactly scared but cautious. It's something foreign, but also a part of you. How can you be this frightened of something that is esentially you?</p><p>Out of sight, a little to the left, a little aback, a jovial, mournful pink-face without features emerges from the dark. It looks at you, blind and searching, a hard boiling anger comes from it in waves. It smells like salty water and burnt sugar and damp cloth. Sulphur and cyanide.</p><p><i>Mine</i>, says a voice inside you. <i>All mine</i>.</p><p>You want to protest, to scream and fight, but you can't. You've said the words. You've invited her in.</p><p><i>It's you</i>, you've said. <i>It's me. It's us</i>.</p><p><i>It's us</i>.</p><p><i>It's us</i>.</p><p>Who are you to fight her now?</p><p>The need gradually melts. You hang your head low, hunch your shoulders and wait for Jamie to return.</p><p>//</p><p>You nod off to sleep, the dim light of the yellow lamp puts you in a drowsy state and you find yourself wondering if Jamie is coming back. You think you won't blame her if she won't, the horror of previous hours playing fast in your tired brain; Hannah and Flora and Miles somehow being alright, not a single scratch on his small face.</p><p>The door to your bedroom opens softly at first and then more strongly. Feet pad silently on the wooden floor.</p><p>You rub sleep from your eyes, you sit up, the dark figure is standing inside your room, and without a sound approaches the bed. The dark head of messy curls is a giveway to who this shadow belongs to and in the dark, two strong arms twines themselves around you, one across your back, the other around your neck, cradling your head softly.</p><p>"I thought you went home." You say in a little whisper.</p><p>Jamie's grip tightens. "Not going anywhere." She says, her voice thick with feelings, with fear and something you feel deep inside your own chest.</p><p>"Just went to check on the kids. And Henry. Owen drank himself into a coma, the poor man. Passed right out in the library. Gonna be hard waking him up tomorrow".</p><p>You are gazing at her with force, Jamie's eyes, green and grey and blue and very very sad, are filled with longing and desire and with sheer, naked need.</p><p>"I'm sorry," you say and try to swallow the ball of tears that's choking you. "I should have been there. For the kids".</p><p>"They have Henry, now," Jamie says in a sort of wild impetience and you can't tear your eyes off of her face.</p><p>No one has ever looked at you with such intensity. These eyes, these stormy, wild eyes, are the eyes of someone who will never leave you and right now, you don't think of what it means for her, what it means for the scary shadow inside you.</p><p>You struggle briefly, then surge forward and surrender to Jamie's embrace, to her hot mouth and cold fingers. You are entwined, falling down into namelessness, eyes closed, hearts out of control.</p><p>Jamie's mouth opens. Her teeth approach your neck. You love her so much you will never let anything touch her.</p><p>As she lays you gently on your back and unwraps the blankets and towels you snuggled in, you become one. Jamie understands you wordlessly, as if among other things, this wonderful brilliant woman has the gift of telepathy. Her breath is coming short, struggling through parted lips. You answer in kind, mouth open, eyes wide.</p><p>"It's okay," she whispers as she moves her hands over your body, slides them up and then <i>down</i>. "It's okay. I've got you. I'm here".</p><p><i>yes</i>, you sigh.</p><p>"Yes".</p><p>//</p><p>Eyes closed, getting your breath back, you realise how worried you are. Not the paniced kind of worry, that has almost all worn out now, but the deifferent kind, the kind that knows a world is anything but just.</p><p>You're worried, because Jamie is lying in your arms, gloriously naked, sweaty skin sticking to yours. Her fingers run mindlessly, gently, up and down your arm. She's looking at you and you stare back at her.</p><p>"Wha's wrong?" she asks in a whisper.</p><p>"You should go," you tell her and watch the hope die in her eyes. "No, Jamie. I mean – I don't want you to. But this… I can't let you do this. It will be the worst kind of betrayel. I can't ask you – " you swallow and try another approach. "It would be careless. Dangerous. You can do whatever you want now. Go wherever you want. You – you can see the world, Jamie. You can be happy".</p><p>"Without ignorance," Jamie whispers into your skin, tears staining her face in two clear paths. "Without carelessness, how could we live, eh?" her voice, raspy and thick with emotions, break on a single vowel. "If we knew what's going to happen, if we knew everything that's going to happen next, if we knew in advance the consequences of our own actions – we'd be doomed".</p><p>Jamie is not one to speak much, unless it's something grand, and now, you understand, it's something grand. You are sweaty and euphoric and the sweet, slick spot between your legs is still throbbing with pleasure and want, but you have your attention set on Jamie, who is gazing at you from under the sheets, mouth pressed hotly between your breasts.</p><p>"We'd be ruined as god, Dani. We'd be stone. Never drink or eat or laugh. We'd never get out of bed in the morning. We'd never touch," she trails her fingers on your skin and you smile at her, tired and sleepy but alert. You nod.</p><p>"We'd never love anyone again. Ever. We'd never dare to".</p><p>"Still," you say in a small voice. "You don't have to".</p><p>"I want to. You see, Dani…" she swallows hard, throat bobbing visibly. "I want to. Don't think I can do anything else, now. Figure I'm drowned. Everything is, really. The sky and clouds and trees and wind. It means nothing to me now. Unless I'm here. Unless it's with you".</p><p>Tears prick behind your eyes. You nod, once.</p><p>"All left now," she says and trails a path of kisses down your stomach. "Is the picture. Also, the story of it. I say – let's not think about it. Let's just live it".</p><p>Jamie between your legs is the picture of happiness. A garden walled with glass. There is no way out for you, only in. There is no loss and no regret and no misery, only love and yearning that drives the story forward, along its twister, scary road.</p><p>"Say 'yes', Poppins, please." It's not a demand, you realise. It's a broken plea. A scared question Jamie is terrified to make.</p><p>You pull her up and into you, the slide of thighs between your legs making it hard for you to think.</p><p>"Yes." You say, clear and strong, into her mouth.</p><p>//</p><p>You've already stuffed all your things into your bags, folded and neat and like nothing ever happened.</p><p>Flora, thinnish and grave, her long light-brown hair brushed, is on some mission through the house. She and Miles are attached to Henry's hip, which you can't blame them for. Henry, a little queasy and shocked with his new posission as a parent, is already starting to take over his duties.</p><p>It's been a week and Jamie hasn't left your side. She's on a mission of her own, feeding and soothing and expainting sins neither one of you commited. She touches you, soft and scared and then gradually more and more freely, with determination and purpose and the need to make sure you're there. During the day she sweeps floors and covers forneture and helps Henry pack the house.</p><p>Your fear is a bottomless pit and there are a lot of things you avoid doing. The children seek your closeness, but with the beast inside your body, with it moving whenever you do, with it watching closely and matching your every move, you try to make some distance, let them off easy, keep them away from harm's way.</p><p>"Don't do it," Jamie whispers late at night, arms wrapped around you, both of you still breathless, still shaking, still sweaty from your previous activity.</p><p>"Do what?" you run your hands all over her body, suddenly so close, suddenly no longer a dream, suddenly something you can do freely. You trace her scars, her soft curls, hot, wet, swollen skin, and Jamie gasps.</p><p>"Don't take you away from them. Not yet".</p><p>So you put a brave front for Miles and Flora and spend the next few days with them. your free time reducing to quiet hours in their company. You let them talk and wind out about whatever's been on their minds; Miles about Henry being so close all of a sudden, Flora about you leaving soon. They are not as free as before, there is no loud laughter and no padding feet and they seek out Hannah when they forget, but it becomes easier as time goes by. They are by no means fine, but they are children and they are small enough to let the fear of it all settle. They are close enough to making you forget just how scared you were. How scared you still are. How utterly devastated you are about Hannah's absence.</p><p>On the day of your departure, you hug Miles and Flora and let Henry give you a bear hug, a brotherly hug of equality and appreciation you never thought he was capable of giving. It's obvious he's very grateful but you can't help but feel he's a little glad to part ways.</p><p>When Jamie climbs into her truck, all smiles and shining eyes and slightly wet eyelashes from secretly spilled tears, you take a big breath of relief and excitement.</p><p>"You alright, Poppins?" she asks and it takes you a moment to nod back.</p><p>It doesn't feel like the end of anything, only as a mere trip. Afterwards, when Jamie has collected her bags from her small flat above an old closed pub, you hug her and cry because you're not coming back and because leaving is both sad and happy and because having her so close to you is a new kind of pain, sweet and scary and everything you've ever wanted.</p><p>//</p><p>You see Owen right before you leave Bly. He leads you and Jamie through a blackout house, a place he used to live in with his late mother. It looks like a nice, cosy home, and you hate to see him leave. Though you know he must.</p><p>He leads you up and back to the narrow stairs, then to the empty street. He has his luggage already pushed inside his small car, the trunk open to reveal just how many things he will take with him to France.</p><p>It's odd. Owen's hug is tight and loving and full of unsaid truths. He gives you and Jamie a hug of equal duration for each. He dabs at his eyes under his glasses. He smiles under his big black mustache.</p><p>"This is not a goodbye," Owen says sternly and Jamie nods, though she doesn't say anything.</p><p>"It isn't." You promise.</p><p>"When I'm settled in Paris, I expect you two to come and visit".</p><p>Afterwards you and Jamie cry, like mothers. It was also the relief, that Owen and his heavy grief has gone away, that he is off out of Bly, away from a place he never liked.</p><p>//</p><p>The weather is unseasonably warm, dry and bright. The sun, so pale and thin usually at this time of year, is full and mellow, the sunset lush. The weatherman on the radio says it's due to some distant, dusty catastrophe – some new, murderous act of god and you've had enough of those lately so you turn the radio off.</p><p>Jamie drives back to the village, to retrieve her already packed bags. Yesterday she left early to have everything set, so you wouldn't linger about. She seemed just as eager as you are to leave this all behind.</p><p>Now, you wonder if there is some part of her regretting the haste leaving, the almost running quality to it all.</p><p>You reach over the gear pannel and take her hand. Jamie gives you a tight-lipped smile, eyes trained stubbornly on the curving road.</p><p>"You gonna miss it?" you ask quietly.</p><p>"No," Jamie shrugs, free and easy and young. So beautifully young. "Got everything I want right here," and she squeezes your fingers in her hot palm and you think you might pass out with how happy you are.</p><p>You help her get her bags into the truck. She doesn't have a lot of things, just couple of all size duffles and one suitcase. When it's all secured beside your luggage, you climb back into the passanger seat. Jamie turns the radio on, a different channel now: electric violins wail, twisted romance, the four-square beat of heartbreak. It's too grim for your shared excited mood so you make a silent question and when Jamie nods in agreement, you turn it off.</p><p>"Ready?" she says and you feel like your grin might split your face in two.</p><p>//</p><p>When the sun is high in the sky and you're still on the road, you shuffle through your bag and produce two tuna sandwiches, two huge brownies and a thermos of tea, all made by Owen's loving hands.</p><p>Out the window there are green grounds pursuing sluggish courses, moving with the wind. You cross a small river and turn south, past beautiful english landscapes. It's a country you love, a country you will miss, with all its sleepy farmers and fields and roadsides, but not a country you'll miss enough to stay, the closeness of it all too big to handle.</p><p>It begins to drizzle and Jamie turn the windshield wipers on. You've been talking about something but the soothing lullaby of the wipers put you to sleep and you try to mumble something, but Jamie kindly laughs and smooths your hair back from your forehead and whispers:</p><p>"Still got plenty of time, Poppins. You sleep now".</p><p>When you wake up you're on a freeway, close to London according to Jamie. There are trucks behind you and some ahead of you, farm trucks with heavy tops and crates of white geese and brown chickens, bound for market. You see their frantic heads poking out, their beaks open and close, no doubt uttering their tragic and ludicrous cries, drowned by the racket of wheels and wind.</p><p>"Alright, Poppins?"</p><p>You smile sleepily at Jamie. "Yeah".</p><p>"Good, 'cause I'm gonna need you alert and wide awake on the plane".</p><p>Your smile grows wider, but also softer as you look at the side of her face, so beautiful and so tense. You have to work terribly hard to remind yourself it's a view you are going to have to get used to, along with the quickening of your pulse.</p><p>In front of you London rises up ahead, an artificial mountain of glass and concrete rising from the flat plain, all crystals and spires and giant shining slabs ad sharp edged ancient history packed too tight.</p><p>"Why?" There is a bloom of slight anxiaty rising in your chest and then gradually subduing when Jamie's face splits into a teasing smile.</p><p>"Never been on a fuckin' plane before," she says easy and scared and very very Jamie-like, "Might need you holding my hand the whole bloody time".</p><p>You reach over and take the hand that isn't resting carelessly on the steering wheel. You squeeze her fingers, once, then kiss her knuckles in a quick manner. You keep a big smile plastered on your face as you gaze at her. When Jamie glances your way for a brief moment, you lean in.</p><p>"I'm not letting go," you say against her palm and you think Jamie knows you mean more than her hand.</p><p>//</p><p>Before Jamie, you used to think that all the love and the smiles and the wonderful things that were absent from your life are due to your own failure, your insufficient love, your wrongness, the part of you that longed to put your lips on another girl's mouth and never could.</p><p>With Eddie, love was only a tool, as were smiles. You learned to present yourself in full control, clothes clean and eyes bright and secrets locked behind tall walls no one but you could pass.</p><p>Now it seems like a foolish thing to do. With Jamie by your side, golden and smiling and teasing, it feels wrong to pretend. There are no fake substitutes for love without violating its meaning. Love is not a tool to accomplish a certain ends. Love is magic, more than the chemicals you were taught it was. Your heart is racing whenever Jamie's greyish-green or greenish-grey eyes turn your way. Your heart skips a bit when she leans closer, you almost forget how to breathe when she puts her hands on your waist.</p><p>You have never loved anyone the way you love Jamie.</p><p>Jamie, who shines like a hundred suns, who shine so brightly to return your own reflection. Jamie, enhanced and sparkling and everything you have never thought you'd be able to get close to, not to mention touch.</p><p>Jamie's love is not the pursuit of shadows, it's a lasting thing with no end. It isn't doomed, and isn't fleeting. It doesn't hurt.</p><p>//</p><p>The place smells greasy, although it's clean. Your hotel is cheap, so cheap nobody even glanced your way when you booked a single room. It's enough to change and sleep, to hang on to Jamie like a drowning person hanging to a piece of floating wood.</p><p>It's unremarkable. It's perfect.</p><p>On the stretch of sidewalk outside there's broken glass and vomit and what looks like drying blood. There's a bar on the ground floor, but no place to eat. Outside there's a red neon sign and a map. The hotel smells like Christmas and something entirely unpleasant.</p><p>The hotel is nothing like you've ever seen before. It has black and white mosaic tiling of the entranceway surrounding what once was perhaps a red lion, but it's been chewed away as if by stone-eating moths. The ochre-yellow linoleum floor hasn't been scrubbed for some time, splotches of dirt bloom on it like grey pressed flowers.</p><p>You pay at the register for a room and the lady behind the counter has gloomy dark eyes and she's chewing gum. The place is plain, assertive, without pretensions to grace, like a railway clock; utilitarian.</p><p>Your room is on the second floor. Jamie carries most of your begs, but neither one of you have much luggage. The room smells like dirty socks and decaying teeth and you can't stand being inside the room with Jamie, this small room, standing so close to her, without touching.</p><p>You walk up the stairs. The floor is carpeted. Once it was blue or maybe red. A pathway strawn with flowers, worn down not to the roots.</p><p>"Sorry," Jamie says. "Should have searched for a better place".</p><p>You say something, entirely too silly, way too brightly. Then you try to fix it. You're talking too much, you can hear yourself, and what you're saying is not at all beguiling.</p><p>On the walls there is wallpaper, no longer any colour. The doors are dark wood, gouged and gored and flayed. The double bed is covered by a slippery spread, imitation quality satin, a dull yellowy pink like the sole of a foot. One chair, with a leaking upholstered seat that appears to be stuffed with dust. An ashtray of chipped brown glass. Cigarette smoke, spilled beer, and under that another more disturbing small, like underclothes long unwashed.</p><p>"That's…"</p><p>"Only for tonight," Jamie says it as a promise, as if you care about the room. As if you care about anything beyond the brown haired woman with which you're about to share this tiny space.</p><p>Jamie goes to the window and hoists the sash. A thick breeze pushes in. outside, a car grinds past. Jamie turns, still at the window, leaning backwards, her hands behind her on the sill. With the light behind her, all you can see is her outline. You'd know it anywhere.</p><p>"Poppins?" Jamie says, head bowed to try and catch your eyes. "You alright?"</p><p>"Yeah! Yeah, I'm okay".</p><p>"Is it the room?"</p><p>"It's not the room".</p><p>You've never seen Jamie look so nervous. You didn't even know she gets this nervous. You've only ever seen her confident and brave, even on the verge of panic, even on the verge of violence, even crying and scared and out of her element.</p><p>You go to her and slip your arms around her waist, slide your lips up and down her throat.</p><p>"Jamie?" you say in a streched out whisper, in what is almost a whine. "You don't have to do anything – "</p><p>Jamie's arms come around you. She smells like smoke and airplane seats. She rests her head on your shoulder, the soft of her cheek against the side of your neck. You have her safe, at least for the moment, and you sigh with relief.</p><p>"Not gonna waste time pretending this isn't where I want most to be," she says into your hair, breath hot on your scalp. "If that's what you want".</p><p>"Want?" you almost laugh with hysterics and Jamie shudders under your touch. "Jamie, this is – "</p><p>Too much, too soon.</p><p>"Are you tired?" you ask instead, lifting your head from her shoulder.</p><p>"Can use the sleep," she shrugs. "Been a long day".</p><p>"Don't go to sleep," you say and move away. Jamie's pupils are blown wide. Her mouth is slightly open. You take a ragged breath.</p><p>"Don't go to sleep, yet. Come to bed".</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie presses to you, groans catching in your throat as she jerks your skirt down your legs. Her hands are roaming all across your body, something urgent and graceless, and she waits for you to nod before dipping her fingers low between your legs.</p><p>Your hands are in her curls, your head tipped back and you thrust your hips into her hand. Your breaths and moans mingle with Jamie's rasps and it doesn't take much for you to come, just a few angled presses into a soaked through cotton.</p><p>Jamie is not much slower to coax into a panting, wanting mess and she makes raw noises into your mouth, sloppy kisses sliding down your jaw.</p><p>Then, you sleep. The sun moves, the light dims. When you wake up, still in Jamie's arms, naked bodies pressed hotly together, it's full dark outside. From down below the window, where the bar is, come snatches of off-key songs, shouts, laughter, the sound of glass shattering. Someone smashed a bottle. A woman screams.</p><p>Sex with Jamie is like nothing you experienced before. It creeps up on you, all those sensations, all those sounds. How does she do that? What is it made from? What secrets lie beneath her fingertips? Her tongue? What is her love? How can it feel so good, wearing nothing at all?</p><p>Pleasure is thrown about you like a smokescreen. Jamie is easy to wake up and you move together before either one of you is fully awake. You're writhing beneath her, moving above her, riding her rigid muscled leg, her persistent fingers, her lapping tongue. You're an out of control body, like raging fire, like something out of this world, and suddenly, you're there and you're arching and crying out and Jamie laughs her raspy laugh, eyes dark with want.</p><p>Like a storm, only multiplied. Everything is in full spate.</p><p>You touch Jamie with curious fingers in the darkened room, and she's all sorts of colours, excessive and beautiful and far too bright. You remember touching her earlier today, and this one time, back across the ocean, and it feels ten times better.</p><p>You are smiling too much for this, and you are liquid and incandescent, you are bursting with feelings only Jamie can coax out of you. She is smeared all over your hands and chin, she is a noise of large moans and numbing cries and her skin is flushed and sweat runs down her back.</p><p>When she moves under your touch, it's intoxicating. You are in no rush, and Jamie complies with soft moans, soft mewling sounds, begging and encauraging. You move in sync, she reads you like a well loved book, you mimic her movements and then experiment some of your own. You know her body, but only as a concept, you enjoy spending hours mapping her out.</p><p>Journeys end in lovers meeting, you've always thought. They should. They must.</p><p>This, with Jamie, doesn't feel like the end. It's only a bright beginning.</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie is fascinated with America, happy and wide-eyed and excited, bouncing in her driver's seat like a child on a sugar rush, steering the car in the right directions, on curving roads, stealing glances at the map across your thighs.</p><p>You're in no hurry. You have your hand in Jamie's palm, and home is glimmering right beside you, eyes stormy, voice raspy, smile crooked. There is no need for you to hurry, no place you need to be, so you relax into the uncomfortable seat of the rental car, and later that day, into a hard mattress on a road-motel and enjoy the time you've got.</p><p>There are tens of different motels, roadside motels on dark nights, in rain, on sunny days. Postwar things, old and ugly and cheap. There are no questions asked and none of the names in the front-desk register are real and it's cash in advance – things that make Jamie grin and your heart go wild.</p><p>The offices are usually strung with old christmas tree lights, like in some bad movie; behind it a clump of murky cabins, the pillows fragrant with mildew. The women and men occupying those places never bother anyone, eyes too haunted to care.</p><p>It isn't home. Home is a warm and safe haven. But it's a place to rest and Jamie is beside you, hands on your waist, on your hips, around your shoulders, mouth full of encouraging words. You're tired and on foot, you're limping. You're lost in the thick dark jungle, and no white stones mark the way, the ground is treacherous and covered.</p><p>Jamie is there, though. Jamie;s always there. She cannot see the ground, cannot see the jungle, yet she's there. She stands by you, near and hot and brave, gazing blindly at angry monsters, bloodlusty wolves, mean creatures she cannot see.</p><p>She has your hand in hers, fingers strong, wrapped tightly around yours. Her heart is in the right place, keeping you afloat, and she lets you, in her Jamie sort of way, get your own affairs in order. She's your friend, your lover, your partner. She's the right companion. Your helper.</p><p>"Right here, Poppins," she says. "Not going anywhere".</p><p>You always answer: "Thank you," when you mean '<i>I know</i>.</p><p>//</p><p>You move from place to place. Now you stay in a room near a junction. It's above a hardware store. In its windows is a sparse display of wrenches and hinges. It isn't doing too well, but nothing around here is doing too well.</p><p>Grit blows through the air, crumpled paper along the ground; the sidewalks are treacherous with ice, from packed snow nobody's shovelled.</p><p>Jamie's eyes shine like mysterious diamonds, blue and grey and green and lovely, full of new things you want to discover.</p><p>There is a train station close by, whistling trailing into the distance. Never hello. Always goodbye. Unlike you and Jamie, the trains are never on time and always departing and you want to keep going, to leave this place and find another.</p><p>Jamie feels the same way.</p><p>There is another room, two flights up, back stairs with rubber treads, the rubber worn patchy but at least it's a separate entrance and when you lay Jamie on the twin bed and kiss down her toned stomach, her pants and cries doesn't bother anyone.</p><p>You share a wall with a young couple in another town, in another place. They have a baby and both of them look tired. Your bed is squeaking and by the time you move to another place, you're both buzzing with desire, with the need to kiss and touch and caress, which was denied for almost seven days.</p><p>"This one's nice," Jamie says when you push the door open. You smile at her, happy whenever she is, wherever she is, though the place is far from being a palace. It's a two room hole created by dividing a larger one. The space is narrow and cold and there's a breeze around the window frame, the radiator clanks and drips but gives no heat. A toilet stashed in one chilly corner, old piss and iron staining the bowl a toxic orange, and a shower stall with a rubber curtain grimy with age.</p><p>"I'm so sorry," you whine because this is not home and this isn't what you had in mind when you talked about the states and this is not a place where you want Jamie to feel comfortable, though she does. She has a lopsided smile on her lips and a mischevious gleam in her eyes and she closes the door and drops the bags and she kisses you, intoxicating and hot.</p><p>"Poppins," she says. "It's perfect".</p><p>A small bed, plywood counter stuck together with furniture nails, painted yellow. A one-ring burner. Dinginess blankets everything like soot.</p><p>"This is perfect." She mumbles into your mouth and you nod because you don't care about the walls, you don't care about the filth, you don't care about the itchy pillows.</p><p>Jamie is sinking on her knees before you and you care about very little with her hands grounding you in place, tugging you close, pressing you against her eager mouth.</p><p>//</p><p>The sky is clear and bright and depthless as metal, the sun pouring down like lava. The heat wavers up off the asphalt; the small towns closing against the sun, their curtains drawn. They have signed lawns and white-pillared porches and gas stations and minivans. There are glass tops.</p><p>Jamie is a confident driver, wrist resting on top of the steering wheel with practiced ease, her other hand mindlessly on your knee. She strokes her thumb up and down your leg and you wonder if she knows what she's doing to you.</p><p>You're driving for four hours now, passing lakes and green openings. Outside the window there are dusty smells of dead minnows and warm waterweed and hot sand.</p><p>It's a foul day, torrid and hazy; hotter than the hinges of Hades. Above the lakeshore there is an invisible but almost palpable fog, composed of stale perfume and the oil from tanned bare shoulders, mixed with the steam from cooking wieners and the burnt tang of spun sugar.</p><p>You and Jamie walk into the crowd and it's like sinking into a stew – you become an ingredient, you take a certain flavour and Jamie's forehead is damp, her curls plastered to her head.</p><p>You want to take her hand, to squeeze her fingers, to hold her, but it's too hot and too public for you to do anything like this so you just lean in closer and whisper into her ear how happy you are, right here, in this hot weather, with her by your side. Jamie's smile, which you thought surely cannot get any bigger, is huge.</p><p>There is a screaming roller coaster, a chorus of female noise; of metal on metal and an ominous rumbling. You're walking side by side, close enough to touch, and Jamie has a child-like wonder about her mouth and eyes, setting her features into something you had yet to witness.</p><p>The rollercoaster screams past, the shooting gallery makes a noise like popcorn. People laugh all around and you are becoming hungry. Jamie, always so attentive, always reading your body with practiced ease, as if you’ve spent your entire lives together, as if wired to tune in, is proposing a snack.</p><p>You steer each other gently through the crowd, enjoying the festival. Jamie doesn't frown anymore like destiny, but smiles easy and young and you have a rising need to spin her around and kiss her.</p><p>There are waffle booths and all sorts of attractions to which you don't go. Jamie smells like vanilla and hot sweet syrup and shampoo. It's nice and you like having her close to you, even in such a crowd.</p><p>"Reckon I like America better than the dark damp place I came from," Jamie says around a doughnut and you laugh and laugh and laugh.</p><p>"You should see <i>my</i> side of America," you tell her and she slips her fingers in the spaces between yours and squeezes your hand.</p><p>"If you want to, Poppins. Whenever you're ready".</p><p>"Really?" you puzzle. Jamie just smiles.</p><p>"Alright," you say.</p><p>"Alright," she answers with a single nod and then you smile a weak deprecating little smile.</p><p>You get tired of being in a crowd soon after. The attractions are beautiful and the people are happy and loud and full of glee but the air is hot and you long to be back in your motel room where you can strip Jamie's clothes off and have her as close to you as possible.</p><p>//</p><p>The heat wave continues all through the trip. Sultry weather, damp foreheads, a shower before bed whenever you find a good enough place, and Jamie hot, smart fingers playing you like a well loved instrument, like something that will never end.</p><p>"This is good," Jamie sighs, tongue licking at you, voice gentle and you take a deep breath, you don't have sense enough to stop three dangerous words from spilling out.</p><p>"Yes," you say even though it wasn't a question. "Yes, it's good".</p><p>Jamie has her arms around you, nose buried in the crook of your neck, breath hot on your skin.</p><p>You say, "I love you," and Jamie's breath catches, her hands harden on your skin, short nails digging into your back and sides.</p><p>"What?" you ask, moving away so you can look into her brilliant eyes. "Too much too soon?"</p><p>"No," Jamie shakes her head. "No".</p><p>"Scary?" you breathe out, some calm, some stocktaking. Jamie's eyes are soft and full of words she isn't ready to say yet, full of feelings you know echo deep inside you and with her hugging you, slippery skin on slippery skin, the tang of arousal mixing with her sweet Jamie scent, there is no need for panic.</p><p>"Not scary," she says before kissing your lips.</p><p>The air is like wet fire; everything limp or yellow. There is always a fan, a thing that sounds like an old man with wooden foot climbing the stairs; a breathless wheezing and Jamie sleeps in your arms, both of you gloriously naked, searching for a cool breeze.</p><p>In the heavy starless nights you stare up into Jamie's eyes and you love her with so much enthusiasm, with so much lust and want and desire, with so much <i>love</i> she often has to rest her hands on yours, hug you close, breathe heavily into your ear, asking you to '<i>stop, for christ's sake. You're gonna make me pass out</i>'.</p><p>You are drunk on her closeness, on her scent, on her hands and kisses and person. You are drunk on how her fingers dig hard into your upper arms, how eagerly she rolls you over, how bold and ferverent her kisses grow when you sling your arm across her shoulders, electric with desire. You're so in love you can barely contain it on the long hot drives during the sunny hours.</p><p>"It's big, isn't it?" you say afterwards, face buried in the junction between Jamie's shoulder and neck.</p><p>"It is," Jamie drags her fingers up and down your spine. "And I – I feel it, too. I – "</p><p>You press your fingers against her lips. You can still smell her on your hand and Jamie darts her tongue and flicks gently at the tips of your fingers, licking then clean.</p><p>"It's okay," you say and you have a big smile on your face. "Jamie. It's okay".</p><p>She sighs, eyes closing, sinking into your embrace.</p><p>//</p><p>At nights you dream about a huge house, you think it might be Bly manor, only it's fairly new and you almost don't recognise it. In your dreams you know it's a long time ago, gone and washed from memory, a time you cannot chase.</p><p>The house is dark behind you, deserted, everyone in it gone away. You're left behind in a ridiculous fancy dress. It's night with a fingernail moon. By its light you can see that there is a single plant left alive; a glossy sort of bush with one white flower.</p><p><i>Jamie</i>, you say, and you don't recognise your own voice. It's deeper and darker and it comes rumbling out of your chest, like thunder.</p><p>From over a shadow, a woman laughs. It's not Jamie's raspy laugh, not her gleeful shriek, but a dark sound, humorless and mean and it belongs to your beast, the presence in your chest that somehow never quiets down enough to make you forget about her. You are both yourself and her, the flower that is Jamie no longer in sight.</p><p>It isn't much of a nightmare, you think. But you wake up sweating and crying and scared, shaking like a leaf.</p><p>Your mind is in a jumble of panic and sadness and you don't know why you dream those dreams. Your mind turns on you, rends you, digs its claws in. they say if you get hungry enough, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.</p><p>"Dani?" Jamie's sleepy voice is behind you in the shadows. Her hand rests lightly on your waist and she move when you do, matching herself to your frantic scrumble, your restless heap.</p><p>"Just a dream," you choke out. "Go back to sleep".</p><p>"You sure?"</p><p>"Yeah," you pat her arm, sweat running down your face and back.</p><p>"C'mere, then," she murmurs, already drifting back to sleep and you sink into her arms, heavy, slow, pushing yourself against her for protection and consolation.</p><p>The dream dissolves eventually. The memory is like a nail scratching on cement.</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie is talking in her low, deep, almost rough whiskey voice and you listen to the scraped overlay sound as much as you listen to the words. She's talking about poetry and things you've never associated with her before. About art and music and also about plants, but she's talking about them like they are loved pets, more than anything else.</p><p>The road is an endless curve ahead of you. There are no other cars on it, you've left the petrol station about half an hour ago, and it feels like you're the only people on the plant, just you and Jamie and her beautiful, lustful voice, painting pictures over the poem you've just read.</p><p>"The sacred river is alive," she says idly when you lift your head from the book you have opened in your lap, over the map you've been tracing. "It flows to the lifeless ocean, because that's where all things that are alive end up".</p><p>It's such a Jamie thing to say you don't know why you were surprised in the first place.</p><p>"The lover is a demon lover because he isn't there," and then: "The sunny pleasure-dome has caves of ice because that's what pleasure-domes have. After a while they become very cold and after that… well, guess they melt. Then where are you?"</p><p>You raise your eyebrows and Jamie has a playful look on her face, a mischevious glint you know all too well.</p><p>"Jamie – " you try to warn, swallowing a huge smile, but Jamie has her mind set on torturing you today.</p><p>"All wet," she says, biting off words in her lovely accent and you flush bright pink.</p><p>She wiggles her fingers and at the mention of her words a sharp pang goes through you.</p><p>"Stop," you say weakly, with a fond smile. "Stop that".</p><p>Jamie is driving, and she laughs freely. Her scratchy child's laughs.</p><p>"Keep your eyes on the road," you warn and you want nothing more than for her to pull over.</p><p>"Your wish is my command," she drawls and you both laugh, free and happy and in love.</p><p>//</p><p>You move a lot, which is well and fine since you can't find a place you'd want to stay at, and Jamie has set her mind on watching it snow, watching it turn fairy-tale white, with you by her side. You just want her to be happy, you don't really care about the surroundings, so you drive across the country, and hope for the best.</p><p>Jamie's philosophy is set firm between you. You're not making plans, you're not talking about the future. Jamie's stormy eyes, beautiful and determined and full of ghosts she isn't ready to talk about yet, is set on the road. Your eyes are set on Jamie, one blue and one brown, something like ugly, though Jamie's smile doesn't waver, doesn't move. She gazes into your mismatched eyes and there is infinite tenderness in her expression, tugging at her lips, smile crooked and soft.</p><p>The places you stay at are narrow and cheerless and they stink of old cigarettes and sordid deeds and damp earth. The people who rent you those places are mostly women and they are sullen and insolent and they stare, as if they can picture what you and Jamie do once the door is closed. They stare and the stare is full of envy, but also spite.</p><p>"They're staring," you tell her and Jamie raises her eyebrows in a surprised expression.</p><p>"Who does?"</p><p>"Everybody," you try not to smile. Jamie's incredulous panic is endearing.</p><p>"Fuck they stare for?" she circles herself like a puppy chasing its tail.</p><p>"They stare at <i>you</i>," you say and trace your fingers across her palm. "I honestly can't blame them".</p><p>"Well," Jamie says, eyes deep and soft and full of meaning. She leans closer, almost close enough to kiss. "I only stare at you, Poppins".</p><p>//</p><p>You never stay in one place more than a couple of days.</p><p>You travel and the world is warm, getting cooler now, smells of stirring roots and sodden vestiges of last winter's discarded newspapers. The daffodils are out in a few front gardens and there is no shade but there are tulips, red and orange and it makes Jamie's eyes widen with delight, like they do when she looks at you.</p><p>You smile.</p><p>"A note of promise," Jamie says and kisses your knuckles.</p><p>She has her hair up, away from her eyes, and she's wearing faint blue flannel over a tiny white crop top. Her legs are bare, miles and miles of tanned skin on display, though she is just as short as you are. Her legs are strong and muscular like the rest of her and you slide your hand over her skin, soft and smooth.</p><p>"Keep doing that," Jamie says with a radiant smile. "Gonna have to stop the car".</p><p>"No, you won't," you say and your hand is still on her leg, smoothing up and down her hot skin.</p><p>"Dani," Jamie grits through clenched teeth as you slide your hand up to a place that make Jamie jump, and you lean over and whisper into her ear.</p><p>"Behave yourself".</p><p>Jamie doesn't.</p><p>//</p><p>"If we keep driving north it looks pretty rural," Jamie is hunched over the map, spread on the counter of the diner, her plate pushed to the side, eyes roaming the small colourful curves on the big sheet of paper. "Lots of green".</p><p>You've been gazing at yourself in the paper-towels holder, your eyes the unfamiliar mismached blue and brown, hair as neatly arranged as you meant this morning, before leaving the room. Now you snap your attention back to Jamie. Jamie, who is wearing a soft brown jumper and has her curls pushed back from her face, leg bouncing excitedly for the day ahead.</p><p>The rain outside the diner is light but steady since yesterday. Mist rises from the trees, from the roadways. You didn't plan on having a late breakfast anywhere but in your car, on your way to your next adventure, but you've come past the front window of the small diner with its painted block-letters spelling the purpose of the establishment. You and Jamie slip inside, grateful to be away from the cold. Jamie has shaken the umbrella and you've thrown back the hood of your coat and the owner, a chubby smiling lady with pink cheeks and a happy smile invited you to take your place near the heat coming from the kitchen.</p><p>Jamie's heavy boot knocks lightly against your ankle. You can't help but smile when you look at her. You steal a single cucumber from her snadwich, which she doesn't see you do and something warm and huge has you melting just looking at Jamie.</p><p>There aren't a lot of people in the diner. Men and women in baggy jackets and no ties, jagged haircuts and huge plates are spotted around.</p><p>Jamie smooths her hand on the map, squinting her eyes at some spot she's been studying the past few minutes. You look at her hands. Strong hands, hands that could rescue you and hold you and build a house if needed. Blunt instruments you've seen dig in soil and hammer nails but also slide under your skirt, so gentle and loving you cried with the force of it.</p><p>Now Jamie is flailing her hands about, moving uncomfortably in her chair. "Maybe in a few weeks we can take the train. Get to see Vermont around christmas".</p><p>"Hmm." You say, loud and cheerful and you're not looking at Jamie when she turns a bright smile your way.</p><p>"Snow could be nice".</p><p>You nod and Jamie rocks in place, breathing hard, like she does before saying something big.</p><p>"You'll laugh but ah – " her leg is bouncing again, her hand tapping at the brim of her coffee mug. She doesn't look at you, shy and slightly embarrassed. "Part of me always wanted to go ever since I saw White Christmas when I was a kid".</p><p>She's smiling uncomfortably, chuckling a nervous laugh as if she believes you'd actually make fun of her. You almost choke on the sip of coffee you take, because Jamie is so good and so kind and so hopeful, and you have to be the one breaking her heart.</p><p>Jamie is grinning, though it's more like a wince. Her eyes are widening when she meets your gaze and you have to suck in a very deep, very necessary breath. Jamie is talking before you have a chance to explain.</p><p>"Doesn't have to be Vermont – "</p><p>"No," you cut her off and she's looking at you, steady and attentive and ready to intervine. "It's not that. Snow sounds nice. It's just that… I don't think we should plan. You know, Christmas. It's a ways away".</p><p>You're trying to smile and Jamie is nodding her professional, good nod. She has a smile on her face and her expression isn't gloomy. If anything, it's determined. She has her shirt sleeves rolled up and you want to get hold of her smooth, soft arm. You curl your toes inside your boots.</p><p>"One day at a time," Jamie says and you snap your mouth shut.</p><p>"Yeah, no. I know. I'm – I'm sorry," you twist your fingers, wring out your hands."I – I'm just… being…"</p><p>But Jamie is not having your stummering apologies. She smiles, wide and hopeful and so young you want to clasp her in the arm. To kiss her. To make her forget you ever opened your mouth in the first place.</p><p>"Realistic?" you glance at her and she is still smiling, safe and beautiful and soft.</p><p>"It's alright," Jamie rasps in a hushed tone, leaning closer, eyes shining with such softness. "One day at a time is fine by me. As long as those days with you, Poppins. One day at a time is what we've got. It's what everybody's got when you get down to it".</p><p>//</p><p>Vermont is near and you stay in a place that is dark and shadowy in the corners, comcast scents and vomit, the reek of crated chickens. Horse dung on the road, from the mounted policemen who keep an eye out, not for thieves but for agitators – nests of foreigners.</p><p>Groups of men whispering together like rats in straw, six women by their sides, looking just as mean. There is blood on the sidewalk, a man with a bucket and brush. You and Jamie step fastidiously around the wet pink puddle, Jamie guiding you lightly by the elbow, steering you away.</p><p>You buy two apples from a mute lady. The apples aren't very good, their skin wrinkling, and the lady takes the apple away, points out a punky brown spot and substitutes a better one. You smile and nod and pay, all without talking, meaningful nods and gap toothed smiles.</p><p>Jamie bites into her apple and moans quietly. "S'really good," she say.</p><p>Your current room is around to the side, above a baker's shop. Up the stairs, in a haze of a smell you like. Dense and overpowering – yeast fermenting going straight to your head like warm helium. It reminds you of Bly, and Owen.</p><p>Tears prick your eyes. Jamie takes your hand.</p><p>"I know," she says in a low mournful voice. "Me too".</p><p>//</p><p>After a while the world take shape around you and Jamie once more. There is a washstand and your red backpack, Jamie's duffle bag, a blue suitcase. Beside it, a washbasin. Jamie's shirt is crumpled on the floor and you wonder why it is that tumbled clothes always signifies desire? Wretched and impetuous forms, but also full of meaning. The flames in paintings look like that – orange fabric, hurled and flung, though Jamie's clothes are dark. Almost black.</p><p>You lie in bed, an enormous mahogany structure that almost fills the entire room. Wedding furniture, from far away, meant to last a lifetime.</p><p><i>Lifetime</i>, you think. <i>What a silly word</i>. It seems to you right now like a weird concept. A durability. How useless.</p><p>You cut an apple up with a small knife and feed Jamie segments of fruit. Juice runs down her chin and you bend and lick it with a ticklish tongue. She laughs and sighs, fingers digging in your hair, already messy from her wandering hands.</p><p>"You don't need to worry 'bout me, Poppins. All's good".</p><p>"I want to worry about you," you explain. "I want you to be happy and well fed and well clothed and warm".</p><p>Jamie reaches for you again, brows furrowed in concern. "You alright?"</p><p>"Yes".</p><p>"Reckon I need to tell you something".</p><p>You already have your hands on her stomach and you slide them down, fingers sticky with apple juice.</p><p>"Is it urgent?" you ask. Jamie's eyes are easy. You know it isn't dire, and she rolls them back in her head when you trave soft curls and swollen skin, where Jamie is the hottest.</p><p>"Yes," she says and when you reach between her legs, where she's slick and incredibly wet, she chokes out a groan.</p><p>"Not really," and then, gasping. "No".</p><p>//</p><p>The sun declines, the shadows of the curtains move across the bed. Voices on the street outside utter what is supposed to be english but in these parts sound almost like an unknown language.</p><p>You think you will always remember this, Jamie's arm draped over your shoulders, your head resting on her chest, both a little breathless, completely spent. There's a pleasent ache between your legs and Jamie had stained the sheets with a dark mark of want. Her lips are still glistening with traces of you.</p><p>The air is heavy. It smells like desire.</p><p>You don't allow yourself to think of memories and what will come. It's not <i>then</i> yet. This is not how you're living your life. Your life is about today, about <i>now</i> and with the monster lounging somewhere near, far from reach but never <i>too far</i> there's no point in thinking much beyond this moment.</p><p>"Thought about our story," Jamie mutters sleepily and you shift on your elbow, still not letting her arm go, moving slightly so you can look up into her gloriously tired face.</p><p>"Oh?" you say.</p><p>Jamie is grinning. "Snow," she says and your small smile widens to match her mischievous grin. "And a flower shop".</p><p>"Really?" you whisper in delight. It's a picture all too familiar. Jamie with her fingers deep in soil, boots cooked with mud, stricks of dirt across her face. You think she will look good in a place of her own.</p><p>"Only if it's something you wanna try," she says. There's a fake calm about her. You can feel her body buzzing with excitement under you.</p><p>"You really want me in your dream flower-shop?" you ask and graze your thumb lightly over one peaking nipple.</p><p>Jamie's eyes widen, her mouth falls open.</p><p>"Poppins," she says in a sort of whisper, a sort of gasp. There is a wondering gleam in her eyes. "What do I need a flower shop for, if it's not with you?"</p><p>And it's not a declaration of love, not yet, but it's close enough.</p><p>You kiss Jamie, her arm across you.</p><p>//</p><p>As Jamie sleeps, you watch her and you try to think of a proper way to discribe her to yourself.</p><p>You've called her every adjective known to you. You called her beautiful and marvelous and magnificent and magestic. You've called her pretty, you've called her cheeky, you've called her thrilling and safe and lovable and exciting. You've called her brilliant and certain and close. You've called her in desperation and in need.</p><p>But Jamie cannot be reduced to mere words, to one description. She has to be felt, loved, marvelled at. She needs to be close, needs to be touched and nurtured, so strong and fragile at the same time. So wonderful. So alive.</p><p>She's smart and crisp and funny. Sometimes she's snappy, sometimes mischievous. Sometimes she get angry, but never at you.</p><p>She's fresh, one in a million, shining in a crowd. She's the best thing that has ever happened to you, this charming smirking gardner with a cloud of unruly brown curls and shifting eyes, always ready to be a shoulder, a friend, a necessary helper.</p><p>Her accent wraps around your name, around her version of it, and when she mutters it, when she sighs it, when she laughs it, breathless and raspy and chocolatey warm, you like yourself better for it and you love her to the point it aches.</p><p>Jamie swipes you in her arms, dances slowly with you to a distant tune coming from a neighbouring apartment. She kisses you free and happy, like you have all the time in the world. She shakes you a playful little shake, she dips her head between your legs, she sinks on the floor in front of you with stars in her eyes and secrets she isn't ready to spill just yet and it doesn't matter that you bounce from one room to another, from motel to a rental house to a flat not even close to being ready for people to settle in.</p><p>Jamie buys a camera and there is hilarity in it, her aiming the flash at you, you can never tell where it will catch you. She fills her bags with photos of you in a hundred different places, on a hundred different aucasions, dressed in tens of different clothes and you don’t ask her why she does that. You just smile and dip your chin and let her lift your head with a gentle finger.</p><p>"Look at me," she says. "Look at me".</p><p>You throw your head back, all your teeth showing.</p><p>Jamie mirrors your lovestruck expression, your complete happiness. She's smiling, too.</p><p>//</p><p>Get a grip, you tell yourself. You feel an effervescence in your head, like ginger ale. Like alcohol. Sparkling blood. It's as if you're flying – looking down at the world from the air.</p><p>Jamie's lovely distressed face waves like a reflection in a troubled pool; already dissolving, and soon it will be into tears. But despite her wonderful joy, a soft and milky glow surrounds you, the flesh of your arms, where Jamie grips it, is firm and plumped.</p><p>"Fuck," Jamie murmurs. "Fuck".</p><p>Henry Wingrave, so it seems, thinks it's an acceptable gift – a shop and half an apartment just above the establishment, in a nice street of a nice town. You're at a loss for words, but Jamie is openly gapping, jaw slack, face ashen with surprise.</p><p>"Fuck me".</p><p>You want to. You'd like to grab hold of Jamie and haul her into your new apartment and fuck her six ways to Sunday. As if that would fix you both in place. As if it's an acceptable reaction. As if you're not going to call Henry tomorrow and beg him to take it all back while he can, knowing full well he wouldn't.</p><p>There's a letter in your purse, a letter from Henry, with Miles' wild handwriting at the bottom and Flora's picture attached to it. The picture if of you and Jamie in front of what is obviously a flower shop. Not the one Henry bought, but something close.</p><p>"I'm gonna call him and tell him it's too much," you say.</p><p>Slivers of neon light come in through the big windows of the shop, red, blue and pink. Jamie's bright eyes are wide. People have to step around the two of you, because you're transfixed in place, gaping openly at a place you know will be yours.</p><p>"Dani," Jamie whispers like she's forgotten any other word in the english language.</p><p>"What," she has her eyes on you now and her jaw is slack, mouth hanging open. "The fuck…"</p><p>//</p><p>It's raining, the thin, abstemious rain of early spring. Already the blue scillas are beginning to flower, the daffodils have their snouts above ground, the self-seeded forget-me-nots are creeping up, getting ready to hog the light.</p><p>Jamie smiles, surrounded by shipments and bouquets ready for sale. She's so happy inside the shop, you could never get used to it. It's big, so big, her happiness. Like a child. Like you never imagined Jamie can be, indoors.</p><p>"They never seem to get tired of it," Jamie says in a love-struck sort of tone, arms wrapped tightly around your middle. It's the end of the day, the lights are off, no more customers making the bell above the door ring. You've made a good profit, and Jamie smells like a long day, her perfume not so present, her fingers giving off the distinct scent of soil. Of flowers. Of green promises.</p><p>You lean back into her. "What's that?" you ask.</p><p>"Plants have no memory," she says. "That's why they keep doing it. They can't remember how many times they've done all this before. It's beautiful".</p><p>Jamie is a wonder around the shop, and around your new flat. It's not big, neither one of you wants anything big, and you pour your love for each other into the small space Henry was generous enough to provide. Jamie goes around the house with her toolbox, like she used to do in the manor, when it wasn't her home and wasn't her designated place, though part of the routine. She has a hand-held electric saw and electric screwdriver and you are not shocked to find out just how good she is with repairs.</p><p>"Was my bloody job," she murmurs around three thin bolts she holds between her teeth. She's whirring away like part of a motor.</p><p>You smile fondly up at her, holding the ladder with both hands, attempting pitifully to keep her safe.</p><p>Your beast is quiet. Been quiet for some time now. You find that if you keep your gaze stubbornly on Jamie, the monster loses interest. You've been doing that already, so it's just a matter of comfort, the fact that she's backed away, uninterested in the soft happiness Jamie surrounds herself with, draws you in.</p><p>You know, deep down, that the monster is not a bratty child that can be put back in place with a sharp word or a prolonged look, even if this look is landing on Jamie. It's not a theatric. Not someone merely acting up. You cannot minimise the gravity of the situation, something you will always have to keep in check.</p><p>You know that sooner or later, a day will come when the monster will rise again. she will wrench from between broken ribs, warm and bleeding, and no amount of <i>want</i> or <i>gazing</i> or even <i>Jamie</i> will be enough.</p><p>//</p><p>You move to the place you will call home for the next fifteen years on a warm day. Jamie wears a brave smile, a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled past her elbows, ready for work.</p><p>"Ready to sweat, Poppins?" she says playfully and makes her drill whirl in a suggestive way.</p><p>You bark out a laugh and dab your forehead with the back of your sleeve. Jamie gives you a playful jostle, both arms around you. She's beaming and you think you'll do almost everything to make sure she keeps smiling this huge happy smile.</p><p>Jamie ties a blue bandana on her head, keeping her hair up away from her eyes. She has khaki slacks on and tennis shoes and she's striding around the flat with her hands in her pockets and a cigarette stuck to her lower lip.</p><p>You work in unison, Jamie is a constant source of fun comments, somehow making it easier to move furniture and find the right place for things which you haven't given much thought before buying.</p><p>As it turns out, home is quite nice.</p><p>//</p><p>"Don't think about the bed," Jamie promises when you're pulling your shoes on. "It'll be ready before you know it".</p><p>"You promise?" you say, pocketing your wallet. "I'll be quick, you can just wait for me".</p><p>"Promise," Jamie says dissmisivley, and moves a huge plant to the corner of the open living-room space, cocking her head to the side, assessing her handiwork.</p><p>"Alright. See you soon".</p><p>"Kiss," Jamie demands absentmindedly, tapping her cheek with one finger and you skip happily to her, angling your face past her shoulder and placing a sloppy kiss on her lips.</p><p>(You're not surprised, two hours later, to find Jamie still in the living room, the bed all but forgotten, a clatter of frying pens and cooking pots all around her, eyes gazing lovingly at the plants, now all potted and nurished, scattered around the house in places the sun can reach easily).</p><p>"You promised!" you laugh, storming to the bedroom. Jamie raises her hand, a too cheeky smile on her face, knowing there will be no trouble from you. She steps closer, wraps her arms around you, nuzzles into your neck and you melt against her, backed against the standing mattress in a room no where near done.</p><p>//</p><p>Life with Jamie is the best sort of happy. The kindest sort of home.</p><p>More often than not, because you home is not a very fine place and not a very new flat, Jamie puts herself up on self appointed tasks. She measures and saws and hammers away. You go together to grocery shoppings and work together at the shop. This one turns out as some of your favourite times of your life.</p><p>(Some, because if you're being honest with yourself, having Jamie, magnificent and smiling and slightly damp with sweat Jamie, naked in bed is always a top favourite).</p><p>You burn coffee and try your hand in tea, but banished from the kitchen short after.</p><p>"Please," Jamie says when she spits tactfully the brew back to the mug and empties it into the sink. "Stop, I don't know if I could survive this much longer. You have so many talents, Poppins. Hot bevereges isn't one of them".</p><p>You laugh at that. You don't make her more tea, and you drink hers happily.</p><p>Jamie, well trained by Hannah Grose's stern looks and sharp tongue, removes her boots at the door most of the time. She wasn't allowed back in the manor to track what Hannah called <i>her dirt</i> onto what she called <i>her carpets</i> – so now she tiptoes around the floor with socked feet, smiling sheepishly at you, kissing you deep and happy and hungry.</p><p>Neither one of you is terribly messy, but you don't over do the cleaning of the flat. Sometimes there is a useful adhesive skin on the floor, an accumulation of dust and grime like a thin coating of glue, but when it gets too much, you and Jamie muster enough enthusiasm between the two of you and scrub and scrub and scrub, making the floor slippery and polished, treacherous as a glacier.</p><p>When she slides down the corrider on her socked feet, in a shirt and not much else, you roll your eyes fondly.</p><p>"You're worse than Miles," you tell her and she climbs into the bed, on top of you, prying the book you've been reading away from your hands.</p><p>"Oh, yeah?" she says, biting at her bottom lip and you forget about the floor and focus on Jamie.</p><p>//</p><p>Your life with Jamie is something you've never imagined, never would have guessed in a million years. It's pastel colours and evening classes, it's a lot of information, a lot of styles, a lot of frivolity. There are dinners, not always very good ones. Breakfasts and picnics and ocean voyages which are a whim of a moment. There are pubs, dimly lit, and newspapers shared and small items that do not assort very well with tragedy.</p><p>But in life, as it turns out, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that let up to it. Everything leading up to it. Hours after hours and days after days and eventually, if you're lucky, years after years. And then, the sudden moment; the knife stab, the shell-burst, the plummet of the car from the bridge, the sinking of a body to a lake.</p><p>//</p><p>You visit your mother with Jamie's hand clasped tight in yours, fingers hot and slick with sweat, almost a year after you move back to America. You're nervous and your heart is pounding. When you step out of the taxi, on a street you once knew by heart, in a town you used to call your home, your head is spinning. You feel a surge of blood to the heart, then a constriction; panic, like a hand squeezing you shut.</p><p>You must have gone pale, because Jamie is leaning into your line of vision, stormy eyes and crooked smile and brave expression. She squeezes lightly on your upper arm, reassuringly.</p><p>"If you don't want to do this, you don't have to".</p><p>"Really?" It's almost a whine. Almost a plea.</p><p>"Really." Jamie has no playfulness around her, no air of mischief. Her eyes are kind and her voice is gentle and there is truth in her words. Jamie, you know, won't be upset if you just turn on your heels and tug her away. She wouldn't say anything about you drugging her across the country on a blasted trip to see your mother and then chickening out at the very last minute.</p><p>Jamie, you know, will wrap her arms around you and hug you tight and make sure you're alright.</p><p>"No," you tell her. "I'm alright. Let's do this".</p><p>Your mother is expecting you in the living room. You've called ahead to arrange for this, and she sounded tired and slightly excited to hear from you, though not very concerned.</p><p>Your mother is greying, and shaped like a wooden clothes rack, brittle bones with damp looking textiles and you can tell she's drunk. She's wearing good clothes but her eyes are unfocused and when she hugs you her grip is hard on your shoulders. You are almost shaking with horror.</p><p>"Mum," you kiss her cheek. A year earlier you would have been frightened of her, or rather frightened to face her after running away. With Jamie by your side, there is no fear, just a slight uncomfortable feeling and your heart is clenching in your chest because your mother is a hard woman but you've missed her.</p><p>"This must be your friend".</p><p>"Jamie," Jamie provides, extending her arm for a shake. Your mother shakes the tips of her fingers and drops her hand like she might burn if she holds for too long. Jamie is wearing a soft jumper and jeans and her hair is brushed. She smiles nervously, not displaying her teeth and you give her a brave squeeze, your hand's still gripped tightly around her palm.</p><p>"Well don't just stand there, Danielle," your mother drawls. "Come on in".</p><p>You've never been comfortable in your own home. Your mother has always made you feel slightly like an outsider, a foreigner in your own house, but you always knew there's a place for you here. You feel nervous and somehow twitchy with Jamie by your side. Your mother is looking at you with something like understanding and something like disappointment and something you know all too well and you know that you couldn't come back even if you wanted to.</p><p>"I'm sorry it took me so long to come visit, mum." You say and your mother scoffs.</p><p>She's barely moving her lips. "I knew you had gotten yourself into funny business, Danielle. Being so far from home and all that. With Edmund dead… well".</p><p>"It has nothing to do with Eddie".</p><p>"Nonsense. It has everything to do with him. You never could have come up with it on your own".</p><p><i>Come up with it</i>, you know, is your mother's code for the things you've told her about Jamie.</p><p>You keep your hands in your lap. Jamie's back is straight. Rigid. You've never seen her being quite so pale, quite so silent, quite so out of her depth. Jamie is always charming, always knows what to say. You realise, with some sort of panic, that she's taking a back seat. This is your mother. Jamie is trying to fade into the background so you could have a moment with her.</p><p>You press your hand into her palm, trying to let her know without words that you need her here, with you. Jamie's lips twitch in a small smile.</p><p>'<i>Right here,</i>' her eyes seem to say. '<i>Right here, with you</i>'.</p><p>You look down at the rug. Your mother doesn't try to make the visit feel less like a trial. There is anger in her pale eyes, and something hard that's always been there but not so present.</p><p>"I missed you, mum," you say, exasperated.</p><p>Your mum ignored it. "So what's your plan, Danielle? What is this?" she makes a vague gesture towards Jamie.</p><p>"I love her," you say in a desperate tone. There is a lump in your throat and tears prick at your eyes, but you don't let them spill. You realise that your mother hadn't noticed the colour of one of them changing.</p><p>"Can't you be happy for me?" you make a pitiful attempt at a smile, but it fades as soon as you meet your mother's eyes.</p><p>You leave soon after, Jamie tucked at your side, smelling like tobacco and expansive perfume, like mowed lawn, like something else, too. Something too old and too knowing. Something comforting. Jamie is a flint in a nest of thistledown. In this small town you grew up in. she's flint and not stone, because a flint has a heart of fire.</p><p>"You alright, Poppins? Wasn't – "</p><p>"I'm fine".</p><p>Jamie snorts. It's a small enough sound, but she doesn't believe you, and for a good reason. You don't usually make it your business lying to her.</p><p>"No, really," you try to sound braver than you feel. "I didn't expect her to understand".</p><p>"And still…" is what Jamie says and without further words, she hugs you tight.</p><p>You're still standing close enough to your old house to see the movement of a curtain. Your mother, you know, even if she feels like she might have made a mistake, isn't going to come out.</p><p>You take Jamie's hand and tug her away, heart plummeting.</p><p>//</p><p>Judy O'Mara is a whole different thing altogether. It's a none-thought. A half-thought. A desire you can't quite push down.</p><p>"You sure?" Jamie's hand is still in yours, never leaving your side, always checking.</p><p>You smile at her. "Yes".</p><p>Judy looks older somehow, even though you've seen her two years ago and she shouldn't look any different. She has grey strands in her flaming hair and she howls when she sees you and swipes you into a tight hug, her arms as strong as ever.</p><p>"Oh, Danielle," she cries in your ear and Jamie shifts from one foot to the other, hand still clasped in yours. "My sweet girl".</p><p>You throw your arms around her and howl and howl and howl. You are comforted in her arms, so unlike your own mother, so much more.</p><p>She listens and smiles and cups your face in dry hands you remember all too well. She smiles at Jamie, tight and confused at first, then gradually her smile becomes warmer. She tells you about Carson, about Eduard, about Robert. She tells you how much she misses you and you tell her, Jamie pressed close to your side, about your own life.</p><p>"Oh, honey," she says in her raspy whisper. Judy always had kind eyes. Now they are soft and wet with unspilled tears.</p><p>"I'm sorry," you say quietly and hang your head low. Jamie tenses next to you.</p><p>Judy makes a wet sound, a sob or a laughter, you cannot tell.</p><p>"Sweetheart," she says. "Do you really think I care who you're happy with, as long as you're happy? And really, Jamie looks like more than capable," she turn to a beaming Jamie. "You are, sweetheart".</p><p>You try to gather yourself in Judy's familiar kitchen, but you can't. You're crying and Jamie is crying too, though she is smiling through her tears, and Judy takes you in her arms and hugs you for a long while.</p><p>"Mothers," she whispers in your ear, just as you're about to leave. "Just want their kids to be happy".</p><p>You cry all the way to the airport, Jamie's lips pressed hotly to the crown of your head.</p><p>//</p><p>You wake up abruptly, your heart pounding. From the window there is a clicking sound. someone is throwing stones against the glass. You climb out of bed and Jamie stears, slightly, mumbling unintelligibly in her sleep, hand grasping empty air.</p><p>You make your unsteady, sleepy way to the window and raise the sash higher. When you lean out you see the moon, full, spider veined with old scars, and below it the ambient sub-orange glow cast up into the sky by the street lights. Beneath you is the sidewalk, patchy with shadow and partially hidden by the chestnut tree in the front.</p><p>The clinking comes again. there is a shape there, on the street, bending over, foraging in the garbage cans, shuffling the wine bottles in the desperate hope that there might be something left. Maybe wine. Maybe food.</p><p>A street drunk, impelled by emptiness and thirst. His movements are stealthy, invasive, as if he is not haunting but spying and he reminds you of your own personal spy, filling the gaps between your ribs, pushing against your heart from the inside.</p><p>Then the figure moves to a fuller light and you see dark eyebrows and hollow eyes and a smile that you should know but cannot recognise. It's not a man but a woman, older than you ever had the pleasure of witnessing and to your complete terror – she is beyond recognition. Beyond help. There is infinity of sadness about her, something broken and painful and entirely your fault.</p><p>"Jamie?" you call outside the window, into the empty dark street, and the woman, now you see it's a woman, beautiful as ever and with silver hair, smiles at you. Her smile is small and haunted. She lifts her hand, and moves to the side. She waves. A wave of greeting, but also of departure.</p><p>Now she walks away and you can't call after her. You know you can't. You couldn't. You would never ask her to come back to you.</p><p>Now she rounds a corner.</p><p>Now she's gone.</p><p>You stand in the window, alert but not alarmed. The darkness is heavy around you and you listen to the sound of breathing you know is not there.</p><p>//</p><p>You wake up from a choking pressure around your heart and tears running down your face. Your fingers grapes so hard around Jamie's wrist, you have woken her up.</p><p>"Dani?" Jamie's raspy voice is thick with sleep and fear. "Dani, wa' is it?" her accent is thicker in the middle of the night, less intelligible. Your mind swims in a pool of horror and fright and heartbreak.</p><p>You lay with your wet face, eyes open, shirt soaked with sweat. Jamie is staring at you, sitting with her knees pressed to your thigh. You look back at her and she seems pale and grey and almost unreal. You look at her and wait for your heart too slow down.</p><p>"Bad dream," you say.</p><p>Jamie scoffs gently. "C'mon," But she doesn't ask for clarification, she doesn't push for an explanation.</p><p>This, more than anything, is so perfectly Jamie that you are fully awake now, and you put your arms around her neck and pull her to you, crashing your bodies together, squeezing tight. You bury your nose in her neck and inhale the special scent that is Jamie. Weed and shampoo and clean skin, just a hint of a perfume. A hint of freshly turned earth. A hint of sleep.</p><p>"Oh, baby. C'mere".</p><p>This is easy. Jamie's hands against your ribs, Jamie's lips against your skin, her nose burying itself in your throat. Jamie's breath is warm and sleepy, her palms and the tips of her fingers slightly rough, calloused, very familiar, and it's easy, so easy, arching into Jamie's hands.</p><p>You lose the thread, it's hard for you to focus on anything that isn't Jamie Jamie Jamie. This is hardly the first time, hardly the hundredth, but it feels new in ways you're not expecting. You are prepared for it, but at the same time you don't know what's coming, and what is coming is greater than anything you have in mind.</p><p>"You sure?" she asks, always asks and you thread your fingers through her hair and <i>tug</i>.</p><p>"Please," you whisper. "Please".</p><p>Jamie dips her fingers between your thighs, traces her tongue around a nipple, teeth gently biting into your skin. Chill is rolling through you like a fog, and then Jamie is inside you and her thumb is sweeping over a bud of swollen nerves, breathing hot on your skin, and everything takes on a shivering anxiety – your muscles and your bones and even the tips of your hair. You don't see the faint light from the street, nor the sky through the window, not Jamie's dark lustful eyes. All you are is a trembling, shivering entity, canting her hips restlessly, chasing sensations.</p><p>You are burning fires, flowing in spaces, in Jamie's strong arms, and it's only when you taste her, when you slide your tongue through her, do you see her glittering eyes that make everything better and you don't remember the dream. You don't even remember the pounding panic.</p><p>You are consumed by Jamie and the way her thighs are hugging your head, keeping you in place. The finish is grand, loud, very much to your liking, Jamie not being shy about how much she enjoys it. She has a dopey smile and when she comes it's a huge fire, shaking and magnificent and so so beautiful you can't take your eyes off of her.</p><p>Then, before it's over, you leap at her again, with slick fingers and encouraging words and just like a huge fire, the ashes from the finish drift far and settle slowly and it's dawn already before you let her sleep.</p><p>//</p><p>You've never thought of yourself as a disposable kind of person. You've never moved around the world as if you have all the time in the world. Growing up as you did, with your father's early death shadowing your growth, with Eddie's growing feelings, with so much expectations, you were never free to do as you like. Jamie, you know, has a different story but similar in the way that she, too, never had the chance to just lay back and enjoy the soft years of her life.</p><p>So you never thought of anything as infinite. As forever. As always.</p><p>You move now easily, with Jamie's hand in yours, happy and content and just slightly worried. But you have decided to stick to the here and now, to <i>today</i> and Jamie doesn't make big plans or big declarations and you don't promise the things Eddie so desperately wanted you to.</p><p>"That's what everybody's got when you get down to it." Jamie had said and Jamie had followed.</p><p>You are crumpling time in a good fashion, loving and being loved, but still you feel like you are crumbling it in your hands, tossing it away on enjoyment instead of trying to find a solution – something you can't help but think about and something you never dwell on.</p><p>You're your own speeding car, and you think you can get rid of things like worries, especially when Jamie sweeps you into her arms, abandoning dinner, dancing to the sounds of some got-awful tune.</p><p>Time in dreams is frozen, in the future or the past, but you can't get away from where you've been and where you're going, so you decide to stick to your and Jamie's plan. Live here. Live now.</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie is laying on the sofa, flannel shirt open, feet up, a glass of wine in one hand and a battered paperback in the other. Her curls are messy and her eyes are red and she looks exhausted.</p><p>You kneel by her side, on the carpet, knees already aching in this position. You put a hand on her shoulder and she jumps a little, startled but not angry at the distraction</p><p>"Hey," you say softly.</p><p>"Hey," she answers and a crooked smile spreads on her lips. "Thought you'd be late, today".</p><p>You shake your head. "I missed you."</p><p>Jamie's eyebrows jump up. She puts the wine on the floor beside the sofa and tosses the book away. Then she swings her legs off the side and bends down, elbows digging into her thighs, palms on either side of your head.</p><p>You squeeze her sides and she parts her lips and kisses you ungracefully.</p><p>"I thought you might be tired of me, by now," you confess into her mouth.</p><p>Jamie is biting back a moan and you rub your hands against her back, tender but firm. Jamie's muscular frame shudders above you. Your heart drops somewhere near your stomach when she opens her eyes and her pupils are blown wide.</p><p>"Never," she says. "Never".</p><p>//</p><p>You and Jamie try your hand in cooking. Jamie, with her golden hands and cheerful approach, doesn't get the hang of it and is a little discouraged. You never tried cooking anything other than grilled cheese and peanut butter sandwiches, but you buy the right pans and the right cups and the right knives and you both set to work, laughing and kissing and too busy with each other's presence to actually try and improve.</p><p>You run out of ingredients very often, butter and salt and Jamie makes flying trips to the corner store. You never have enough clean dishes, because you hate washing them and Jamie gets distracted when she ventures back to the kitchen, wearing only a t-shirt and nothing else.</p><p>Your swiss fondue turns into lymph and balls of chewing gum from too high a heat. The poached eggs disintegrate like mucous membranes. Your roast chicken bleeds when you cut it and your only attempt at bread refuses to rise, lying like quicksand in the bowl, a thing Owen will be horrified to even glance at.</p><p>Your pancakes are flaccid with centers of uncooked ooze, the pies rubbery and the failure doesn't dampen your spirit. Jamie tries making sauces, which aren't bad, and you secretly triumph when you are able to produce a thing that can be eaten without too many problems.</p><p>You make it work.</p><p>//</p><p>"I've got something for you," Jamie says in a weird sort of tone, throat clogged. You raise your eyes from the flowers you have been arranging behind the counter.</p><p>Jamie flips the sign on the door.</p><p>"Oh yeah?"</p><p>Then she puts a single white moonflower beside you, leaning in, rocking back and forth, face ashen and concerned.</p><p>"I've got a problem," she says and your heart sinks. "Or rather, we've got a problem, Poppins".</p><p>You try to make light of it, even though Jamie's face says it's quite the opposite.</p><p>"Oh, no".</p><p>"You see," her voice breaks and she clears her throat. "I'm not sick of you. At all. I'm actally pretty in love with you, it turns out".</p><p>The grin that splits on your face is almost painful and you surge forward, colliding with Jamie, kiss sloppy with too much smiling and too much happiness, leaking through your fingertips and into Jamie's skin.</p><p>//</p><p>You get sick right in the middle of a date, the soft warm sluggish feeling creeping on you so fast that Jamie has to lever you up and crate you back home. She hobbles you into the front room and you collapse onto the sofa, your shoes and coat still on. Jamie makes you a hot-water bottle and strong delicious tea and then calls the doctor. The both of them fret and fuss around you, the man giving out a stream of helpful advice and hearty, hectoring tut-tuts and Jamie looks slightly wild.</p><p>You smile weakly at her under the covers, feeling the beast inside your chest moving uncomfortably at the stranger's presence.</p><p>"Jamie," you say hoarsely, weak and cackling. "It's just a cold".</p><p>"Gave me a hell of a fright, though." She answers and you stretch your arm to her for her to squeeze.</p><p>"I'm sorry," you say.</p><p>Jamie lets out a laugh. "You apologise for getting ill. Figures, Poppins".</p><p>For the next week you move as little as possible, head fuzzy and nose hurting. Your body is weak, clamouring about its needs, foisting upon its own sordid and perilous desire, tricks itself to complete absence. You want to get up and eat some soup, go to the bathroom, wash your sticky oily hair, but your body has other things to do. It falters in its weakness, it buckles under you, it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. You feel like a dry stick, easily broken.</p><p>Jamie holds you in the bathtub, washes your body with loving hands, looking worried and small.</p><p>You are weak-kneed, cold, shivering. Inside your head is a cloud of snot and something painful, a gauzy mist, and Jamie carries around bowls of soup and cups of tea and tissue boxes and medicine on an open palm, like a ghostly waiter.</p><p>Jamie looks very young, very fragile and alone. She's wearing a pale-blue shirt printed with some band you've never heard of and loose sweats the colour of winter sky. Her hair, a mess of beautifully arranged curls, is coming down over her shoulders and her eyes – stormy sinful eyes, grey or blue or green, have something paved in them, a look of total concern. Of fear.</p><p>"I'm hovering," Jamie says, always so worried, always looking for your 'OK', for a sign she isn't overstepping any boundaries and you wonder how long will it take her to understand you want all of her, you'd drown in everything she is for the sake of being close to her.</p><p>Still, she checks.</p><p>"C'mere," you say. "I want you close to me".</p><p>Jamie wrinkles her nose. "You smell like medicine".</p><p>"Meaning you won't come closer?"</p><p>Jamie settles behind your back, sighing happily. She is pressed between you and the back of the sofa, head resting on your shoulder, nose buried in your neck.</p><p>"I love how you smell".</p><p>You smell like too many days without a proper shower, like nose-spray and unwashed clothes. You're fighting sleep, now that you have her arms wrapped around you and she isn't running around, trying to figure out something to make you feel better, though you've been improving in the last couple of days.</p><p>"I love you," you tell her. You can breathe again. And you're not coughing anymore.</p><p>"I love you," Jamie answers, cuddling you closer. "Sleep, Poppins. I've got you".</p><p>"I know," you say and you mean it.</p><p>//</p><p>It's April now. The snowdrops have come and gone, the crocuses are up. Soon you'll be able to take up residence on the back porch of your's and Jamie's favourite café, at the mousy scarred old wooden table, at least when it's sunny. No ice on the side-walks now, and so you and Jamie begin to have adventures on particularly slow days, at random, on weekends neither one of you know what to do with.</p><p>You're not a restless person by any stretch of the imagination, and Jamie is happy to stay at home and cuddle, or never leave the bed at all. But you also go out, you visit places you find in magazines, in the advertisement sections in local newspapers.</p><p>Sometimes, your adventures are dangerous, at the back of your shop.</p><p>"Jamie…" you sigh, trying not to moan, not to move too hard against her.</p><p>"You can ask me to stop," she says. "Just ask, and I'll stop".</p><p>"Jamie – " this one's almost pleading and both you and Jamie know you have nothing of that sort in your mind so you keep quiet, as quiet as possible, Jamie's name the only word you can remember.</p><p>Jamie's hands make quick work of your clothes and you love that she forgets (or chooses not to remember) just where you both are and why you both are there and just how dangerous it is, if someone chooses this exact moment to enter the shop.</p><p>Jamie doesn't fuck you. instead, she makes love to you in the back room, with power and gentleness that bring tears to your eyes and when she holds you, after both of you come, hard and slow and powerful, legs shaking and breath hot, you hope she knows why you keep the scratching of the monster inside you chest a secret.</p><p>Jamie is tired and limp in your arms. It's apparent from the way she hugs you and puts her head on your shoulder just how utterly spent she is. She is softened with sleep, her hair a wispy curtain and you close your eyes and hug her tight.</p><p>"Go home," you tell her gently. "I'll be up soon".</p><p>Jamie is soft and muscled and she shakes her head. "Just a minute," she says. "Need a minute".</p><p>You wrap your arms around her waist and Jamie makes a small noise of tired happiness.</p><p>"Go home and sleep. I'll be right there".</p><p>Jamie doesn't leave.</p><p>//</p><p>You go back to Bly with Jamie just once. It's a difficult visit. The grounds are derelict, the gardens overgrown; the conservatory and the greenhouse a wreck, with broken panes of glass and desiccated plants, still in their pots. The walls and the front door are all attached though choked with dead grass and weeds. Jamie's smile when you tug at her hand, is distant, remote and secret and concerned.</p><p>"I'm sorry," you tell her.</p><p>The house itself is also in a sad state, something that would have terrified Hannah. Dust and mouse doings everywhere, stains on the now-dull parquet floors where something had leaked. No vandalism inside the place, however; the wind of the Bly Manor ghost story blows around the house, however faintly, and there is a fading aura of power and money and bad memories lingering in the air.</p><p>You and Jamie walk over to the house. the smell of mildew is pervasive. You look through the library, through the rooms.</p><p>"Henry's really not coming back," you say and Jamie hums in answer.</p><p>When you go back home, you're almost scared of all the new colours. The hot pinks and violent blues and reds and whites and purples. There is everywhere Jamie's lovely fluorescent green of plants, the sun blazing down like a spotlight.</p><p>You hug Jamie.</p><p>"S'alright, Poppins. S'okay," she whispers into your hair. You nod. Your throat is too thick to say anything.</p><p>Home is also a weird string of whispers and trees toppling down. bulldozers rampage through the streets, new buildings are built all around. Jamie keep close by your side, perky as always. When you move through the streets, when you open and close your shop, people are murmuring respectfully. When you get close the voices hush and when you move away they start up again.</p><p>"Bunch of gossips," Jamie says dismissively. "Don't have to go outside together, though".</p><p>"No," you say with more vigor than you feel, surprising Jamie and yourself. "Let them talk".</p><p>Jamie looks like you've just lifted a huge weight off of her shoulders.</p><p>There is no shortage of customers. To your complete surprise, there are more of them. Gentle boys with thin mustaches, square shouldered girls, eyes wide and scared. Jamie is so gentle with them, so soft, so loving, it takes you more time than it should to understand why.</p><p>When you do you kiss her, hard and strong right in the middle of the shop.</p><p>"I love you," you tell her and will her silently to understand.</p><p>//</p><p>You live two lives. One – yours and Jamie's – settles into comfortable excitement, easy loving. The other, a dark distinct invariable you never wanted. Placidity and order and everything in its place, with a decorous and sanctioned violence going on underneath everything, like a heavy brutal shoe tapping out a rhythm on a carpeted floor.</p><p>You try to keep Jamie away from it, from the dark shadowed jungle where your beast is lurking. Away from the ever lasting night, the gripping fear, the uneasy foreign presence in your chest. There is a sticky stuff in your hair and on your flesh, and expensive perfumed grease you can never scrub off. It rubs off all over your skin and you're scared you're going to get it on Jamie whenever she's pressing too close.</p><p>Sometimes, increasingly, as time goes by, there are bruises. Purple and then blue and then yellow. It's remarkable how easy your beast can bruise you. You have never known you bruise so easily, or perhaps it's your monster's doings.</p><p>She favours your thighs, where it's hardly showing, where even Jamie has to work hard to look. Sometimes you feel those marks on your body are some kind of a code, an elaborated message, a violent attempt at language. They blossom and fade like invisible ink, but if it is a code, if your beast does try and communicate, you don't understand her and when Jamie finds out, there is real fear in her wonderfully bright eyes.</p><p>You don't have a key to the code. You don't understand this tongue. You are sand and snow, written on and rewritten on and smoothed over.</p><p>"No," Jamie says and there is fire behind the greyish-green spheres. There is determination. There is a hard resolve. "Won't let her hurt you, d'you hear me?"</p><p>You nod and press your forehead to her shoulder. Jamie's grip is hard on you, fingers digging into the back of your neck, holding you close.</p><p>//</p><p>The apartment smells like rubber overshoes and fresh pine resin and cedar from the garlands weather around the front door. It smells of wax on warm floorboards and the hiss and clank of the radiator. From under the windowsill comes a cold draught, and the pitiless, uplifting scent of snow.</p><p>Jamie has a red Santa Claus hat draped lazily on her head, smashing her curls. She's grinning, spinning in the small living room, laughing with delight. You wear a Santa's coat and you have a small box wrapped in colourful paper behind your back.</p><p>There is a single overhead light in the room, a yellow silk shade. In the glass doors leading to a small room just behind the kitchen, you see both your reflections. Jamie's royal blue velvet jumper, your white faces, your pale hair and Jamie's dark one. Jamie has her hands folded behind her back but she's not hiding anything.</p><p>You can hear Jamie's breath, going in and out; the breath of waiting. It sounds like someone else is breathing, someone large but invisible, hiding inside your chest, though you know it cannot be your monster, who's been behaving lately.</p><p>Behind Jamie, outside the window, there is a night darkness, and a blaze of flame. Jamie's red hat is a wonderful contrast to all the colours surrounding the both of you.</p><p>Jamie's head looks like it's aflame, burning white and red and yellow. It's not fire, just the tree lit up in the corner, too big for your small flat, but something neither one of you could resist. Jamie even pushed some plants to the side, to make room for the decorated tree, with the season's spirit.</p><p>Everything that isn't here and now, everything that is your childhood and mother, Eddie, even the school and fourth graders you used to teach, Bly and the children and an awful shadow, seems far away. Jamie is laughing and then she isn't when you produce the present and everything is far far far away – not something you want to touch, soft-edged and blurry, soggy, like a bun fallen into the water. A remote age, faded and bittersweet, like dried flowers.</p><p>Jamie is too beautiful and too radiant and too brilliant and everything that isn't her, everything that isn't when and where she is pale in comparison.</p><p>She takes the silver necklaces out of the small box and there are tears in her eyes.</p><p>"Dani," she breathes and your name is a wonderful spell on her lips. Her voice is choked with tears. You never meant to make her cry.</p><p>"I – I thought it would be a nice…" you trail off, feeling silly.</p><p>But Jamie is smiling now, eyes shining.</p><p>"Nice?" she says, incredulous. "Nice? This is brilliant!"</p><p>"Merry Christmas," you say and she kisses you, the silver chain dangling from her fingers.</p><p>//</p><p>When you look back, you know something is wrong. It's not because of what you've set down, or how you acted, or how attention you've kept on Jamie, at the same time she has her full attention set on you. it's because of what you've omitted. What isn't there.</p><p><i>She</i> has a presence of her own. Like the absence of light. Like a thick shadow made of everything you never want to remember.</p><p>You want Jamie to know the truth. The whole truth. No secrets kept between you, nothing like the bullshit you and Eddie used to throw at each other. Jamie knows it all. You bad days as much as the good. She knows your history. She makes your future.</p><p>But there are things too painful and too vile and too dangerous to lay on her. She's so strong and so willing. She's still a little rough around the edges, still has a no game policy, still insists on keeping everything simple and immediate. So you don't want the horror, the complete terror of the beast inside your chest heaving on her heavy enough shoulders.</p><p>You want the truth and you want to give it to her. You want her to understand your silence doesn't mean anything but love, but caring, but attention. You want her to understand you can't lay this load on her because you know she will take it. Willingly. Lovingly. So much Jamie-like it pulses in your back teeth just to think about it.</p><p>So you want the truth and you want to put two and two together but two and two don't necessarily get you the truth and doesn't necessarily mean Jamie has to suffer more than she already does. Two and two equals a voice outside the window, underneath your ribs. Two and two equals the wind, the water, the fire and the ground, all shaking and forming and deforming. Two and two equals the living bird is not its labeled bones.</p><p>It means horror. It means death. It means the end.</p><p>//</p><p>Some days, most days, you feel heavy and soiled, like a bag of unwashed laundry. But at the same time, you feel flat and without substance. Blank paper, on which – just discernible – there's the colourless imprint of a signature; not yours.</p><p>A detective could find it but you yourself can't be bothered. You can't be bothered looking. Not at the thing, not even yourself in the mirror, where, even after years and years of stubborn, persistent gazing, the mismatched eyes are all wrong, the fear is uncomfortable, the unsteadiness is too familiar.</p><p>You haven't given up hope, just folded it away; it's not for a daily wear. You take it out when Jamie looks particularly sad, when words are not enough, when <i>touch</i> and <i>kiss</i> and <i>here I'm here I'm right here</i> is too small to do anything.</p><p>Meanwhile, the body which is no longer feeling like your real self, must be tended. There is no point in not eating. It's best to keep your wits about you, and nourishment helps with that. Jamie makes sure of it, but you do too. No use going distracted. Running down the street barefoot, shouting <i>fire!</i> the fact that there is no fire is sure to be noticed.</p><p>"You alright," Jamie says, smoothing your hair, her own curls shining with hidden silver, something that only makes her look somehow prettier, more present, more herself. There is a weariness about her, weariness you hate to think as your own doing, but it no doubt is.</p><p>She's older now, and you're surprised to find small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, deepening beside her mouth when she smiles. It's a good look on her still young face and you feel a hot flash of want surging through you whenever you catch a glimpse of a life longed lived.</p><p>"You're still here," Jamie says, kissing your temple, arms secured tightly around you and you sink into her.</p><p>"I only see you," Jamie says, and God, she does. She does.</p><p>The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one, you figure.</p><p>//</p><p>Unshed tears can turn one rancid. So can memory. So can biting your tongue.</p><p>Your bed nights are beginning slowly. You're pushing forty now, and you can't sleep.</p><p>//</p><p>On some days, when the sky isn't clear and the weather isn't warm and there is a promise of a storm on the horizon, you feel buried alive. The sky is a dome of grey rock, the sun around the cold hole in it through which the light of the real day shines mockingly. Jamie is buried with you and she doesn't even know it. You know it though. You can see it. You can see her flinching at your moves, worried, brows creased, a once smiley face always on the verge of panic.</p><p>You know it's nearing the end, and Jamie knows it too. The both of you can feel it in the air, the way the tension is building around your linked bodies, in the way you hold on tightly to each other. Jamie isn't sleeping well, scared she'll miss your disappearance, though you have promised her time and time again you will not leave without a goodbye (a promise you regret every day).</p><p>Jamie deserves the world. She deserves to be happy. She deserves to go on with her life. She's still young. She could find someone else, she could stop worrying. She could find something new to do. See other places, stop being hung up on mere moments and plan ahead.</p><p>Jamie is not ready to hear any of it. Her eyes, stormy and beautiful and full of hurt lose their softness when you try and suggest anything other than misery. There is a wall, newly built, coming up. It snaps, it rises, it crumbles when she cries.</p><p>You hold her, and she hangs onto you.</p><p>"Don't say that. Don't ever say that," she whispers, tears staining her cheeks. You wipe them with trembling fingers.</p><p>"I made you cry," you whisper in an incredible sort of tone, the beast moving uncomfortably inside your chest. "God, I'm so sorry, Jamie…"</p><p>Her name becomes a stretched-out moan on your lips. It tastes like everything you've ever wanted.</p><p>Your beast laughs mockingly.</p><p>Your only chance is to let her off easy. To slip away in the middle of the night. Jamie will never let you leave, insisting on one more day <i>just one more day</i> and you're too weak and too wicked and too selfish to do anything but surrender.</p><p>You keep an eye on the flat grey sky, watching out for the large crack that is bound to appear in it eventually. You'll make your way to the roof, jump for it. The ladder will be drawn up with the two of you (you and your beast) clinging to it, clinging to each other – she for your soul, you to prevent her from getting to Jamie. You will cling to each other on your way to damp, cold, dark eternity, to towes and spires, out through the crack in the fake sky, leaving Jamie down below on the lawn, gawking with her mouth open, safe. Safe. Safe.</p><p>//</p><p>Under the grey stone dome it rains. It shines, it blows. It clears. Amazing to think how all these naturalistic weather effects are arranged.</p><p>Jamie clings to your arm, fingers digging into your skin. She always had nightmares, mean little things that used to wake her up at night. Now she has it worse and you think you know what she sees in her night terrors. You see it in the way she searches for you in the dark. You sense it in the way she pulls you into her arms.</p><p>"Dani," she says, urges you to come back to her. "Dani".</p><p>Jamie's cries come to you intermittently, as if borne on a wind. Doors open and close, the sound of her tears tiny, immense rage waxes and wanes. Amazing how she can roar without making a sound at all, under the stream of water, in the bathroom, where you can't see her breaking.</p><p>Jamie's breaths become wheezy breathing, the sound harsh and soft, like silk tearing.</p><p>"I don't want you to be so miserable," you tell her at night. "I can't stand it".</p><p>"Then stay," Jamie, your brilliant, selfless, brave Jamie, is trembling and crying and clutching to you like a lost child, like Flora used to do so many years ago, in the security of her small bedroom. Jamie is not a child. Jamie is a grieving woman and a lost soul, and everything in between. For the first time in almost fifteen years, Jamie is selfish and you are going to break her heart.</p><p>You've never hated the dark presence inside your chest so much.</p><p>Jamie lies in bed, sheets over or under her depending on the time of day, several pillows to prop her up, a cup of tea to anchor her so she won't drift off. She holds you in her hands, and if it hits you then just how much you don't want to leave, you never say anything.</p><p>When you look in the mirror and see a faceless shape, dark hair and wet clothes and a mean smile, you sneer.</p><p>"I hate you," you tell your reflection, no longer bearing your image. "I hate you".</p><p>//</p><p>There is a certain fear in you, something you can't quite shake off, that has to do less with the monster in your chest and more with the ticking of time.</p><p>You're tired more and more, the face in the mirror has already started to change. More and more often you are confronted with the blind stare of a beast, rather than your strange mismatched eyes.</p><p>When Jamie is around, humming tunelessly under the stream of water, brushing her teeth next to you, visible just so inside the shop, the sun making it impossible for you to see very well past the shine in the windows, your face is your own, the reflection a familiar, slightly surprised older woman than the one you remember, mouth always kind of hanging open, as if caught in a naughty act.</p><p>When Jamie isn't around, it becomes somewhat problematic to see yourself. Black wet hair and featureless face are what welcomes you and though you jump, startled, and avert your eyes, you always sneak another glance. You always try to look again, bravely this time.</p><p>You relish in grubby little sins. You read books, and kiss Jamie and master the art of flower arrangements under Jamie's soft guidance. You watch movies, you welcome new years, you dance in the kitchen and you think – Jamie will look so good in ten, twenty, thirty years, and you have a strange, almost irrational need, to leave her something to remember you by. Something substantial. Something that marks: <i>here was Dani Clayton</i>.</p><p>You bring home orphaned plants, sad little things Jamie saves with care and attention, pouring her love over dying leaves. The first few times you've done it, Jamie's eyebrows almost jumped off her face, but later when you confessed you can't stand the look of helpless things and not try to save them, Jamie just smiled with soft understanding and nodded.</p><p>And always, without missing a beat, Jamie kisses you.</p><p>She kisses you, she kisses you.</p><p>//</p><p>You wonder if you should do it grand, less ordinary. Something sordid, something epic, something truly harrowing. But you know yourself and you know Jamie and you know something so important isn't to be surrounded by grand gestures and puffed out events. It's not to mark her, to put a label on her, to tie her down. This is about love and friendship and commitment. About more than just a ring. More than just words. More than just <i>forever</i>.</p><p>You wonder, though, which is preferable. You walk around with a swollen heart, mouth dry, hands shaking. The secret is a pressure you weren't expecting and Jamie, always so attentive, is picking up on your nervousness.</p><p>"Wha' is it?" she whispers into your ear one day, hands around your hips behind the counter, the one and only customer inside the shop has his back to the both of you, so Jamie allows herself this small freedom.</p><p>"N – Nothing," you gasp, the sensation of Jamie being pressed so close to your back and the fact you are almost caught in action, makes you stutter.</p><p>Jamie narrows her brows. "That wasn't even trying to be convincing," she accuses softly.</p><p>"It's a secret," you say and give her a quick peck on the cheek.</p><p>"Got secrets, have you?" she teases, a mischievous glint in her greyish-green eyes.</p><p>"A surprise, more like," you say too brightly and Jamie laughs and shakes her head but keeps a close eye on you, in case you need her quick reaction.</p><p>Because you can't keep this from her any longer, because the small golden band is heavy in your pocket, and because you hate keeping secrets from her, you decide tonight is as good as any other day.</p><p>"I have some errands to run before the weekend," you tell Jamie when she's sweeping the floor, at closing.</p><p>"Hmm," she says distractedly. "Want me to pitch in?"</p><p>"How about you go home and start dinner?"</p><p>Jamie's head snaps up. "Pasta?" she suggests and you love her so much it hurts right in the middle of your chest.</p><p>"No," you joke, a fake horrified look on your face, and there is no weight behind your words. "Please don't".</p><p>Jamie has her trademark troublemaker's smile on. "I'll make pasta," she decides.</p><p>//</p><p>It's mid afternoon, cloudy and humid, everything sticky. Your thighs and back are sweaty, some of your light makeup slightly smudged. The world is heavy, a solid weight; your heart pushes against your chest as if pushing against stone. The sultry air holds out against you. nothing budges.</p><p>You don't plan on hiding the ring inside the sad little plant, but it stands on the side-walk, sagged and small and sad. You see it, and you can't help yourself.</p><p>Jamie, you know, will go straight for the roots, examine the problem, serious and smart. She will dig, she will want to know the condition, just how bad things really are.</p><p>It's a no brainer, really.</p><p>When you shake the key out off the door, Jamie is scowling down into the pot, stirring the paste that's supposed to be a pasta sauce in some parallel universe. You can't help the smile that's spreading on your face. Jamie wears her casual clothes, a white tank and saggy old overalls, the colour of olives. Her hair is up in a messy bun, just to keep the curls out of her eyes, and your heart is beating a crazy rhythm in your chest, as though you don't already know the answer, as though there is more than one outcome for tonight.</p><p>This is your best friend. The love of your life. This is the most important person in your life. The most amazing companion, the most loving partner. This is Jamie, and Jamie, though making you feel nervous in the best kind of ways, never makes you feel quite <i>like this</i>.</p><p>It's a big moment, you think. You may be forgiven for being so jittery, even knowing the answer before posing the question. This is big. This is huge. You are not only allowed, but expected to feel this way.</p><p>Jamie tosses a look over her shoulder when she hears the key in the lock.</p><p>"How many years in this kitchen?" she grumbles, face turned to the stove. "My cooking is still shite".</p><p>It's not entirely true. Jamie is a good cook, usually. She has smart hands and nothing is beyond her skills. She makes good comfort meals. She can even make decent cakes and pancakes, if inspiration hits her right. She simply is too harsh on herself.</p><p>Your heart is a thrashing creature, pounding under your wrists, against your thighs, between your back teeth. You're breathing too hard, too shallow, and you have to remind yourself <i>Jamie. It's Jamie. It's just Jamie. Your funny, patient, beautiful Jamie. Your brilliant friend, your loving companion, your silly, mischievous, good lover</i>.</p><p>"What happened there, then?" Jamie has a fond smile on her face, and you lift the half-dead plant, shaking it nervously.</p><p>"Found it on the street," you say in a small voice, can't take your eyes off of Jamie. "Wanted to save it".</p><p>Jamie laughs, a puff of breath more than anything, and shakes her head lovingly. "Give it here, then".</p><p>You step around the counter, try to busy yourself with steering, try to keep the nerves in check. When Jamie turns, eyes wide, fingers closed around the ring, she looks thoroughly confused.</p><p>"Here's the thing," you say and keep your eyes on Jamie's face, willing your hands and guts to stop twitching, stop trembling, stop shaking quite so much.</p><p>There are words, and Jamie's smile, so beautiful and big. You want to make her smile like this more often. Every day if possible. You tell her she's your best friend, the love of your life. You say you don't care how much time you have left, don't care you can't technically get married, don't care about anything as long as she says yes, as long as she's with you.</p><p>It's a shaky exhale of breath. A sharp wet laugh. A wild panicked, happy <i>Yes.</i></p><p>"I reckon that's enough for me, yeah".</p><p>Jamie's crying now, incredulous smile and wet eyes and it's like a promise fulfilled. Jamie moves closer and you move to her, the sauce all but forgotten on the stove. You touch her. she kisses you, and you realise you're both shaking.</p><p>Jamie is shaking with excitement. With laughter. With joy.</p><p>You shake with fear. With trepidation. With longing for something you already have.</p><p>//</p><p>You and Jamie travel to Paris in a smoke-choked plane. Owen is expecting you on the third day of your visit, his restaurant being too busy to spare a moment, so you book into your hotel and go out exploring the city.</p><p>You've been to Paris on your long trip across Europe, right before setting off to London, but Jamie hasn’t and the city, ancient and beautiful and cool, changed somewhat from your last visit.</p><p>You walk around and gaze and parks and statues and buildings. You see the Eiffel Tower but don't go up it. You see the Pantheon, and Napoleon's tomb. You go to Notre Dame, and a couple of other churches. You see various bridges, various well-worn angels and the river Seine. Jamie walks around with round eyes and child-like excitement and there are no traces of shadows in Paris, except for one place, where Owen waits, eyes sad and kind and old, much older than they have a right to be in his lovely young face.</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie's laugh sounds a little shaky to your ears, but maybe it's just the crashing of blood through your head when you see Owen for the first time in a long time. Years. How many? Five? Six? You can't remember, but Owen, besides having extra strands of white through his thick black hair, hasn't changed a bit.</p><p>"This is the <i>best</i> news. I'm so happy for you both".</p><p>"Cheers, mate".</p><p>Jamie has a beautiful open smile on her face and she wears a wonderfully tight dress and her hand is snaked around your body, palm splayed on your ribs, just under the side of your breast. She chain smokes and Jokes and when you catch a glimpse of your unwelcome companion, in the smooth surface of the pitcher the waiter has in his hands, your body goes rigid for a much different reason.</p><p>Owen's restaurant is dimly lit, placed in a big enough corner of one of the most fashionable streets in Paris. It feels lighter than the pictures he has sent you a year or so ago, big and festive in atmosphere. It has rows of beautifully arranged tables, lines of chandeliers. It feels leathery and ponderous and paunchy, but also proper and warm and very much Owen like.</p><p>"Owen, this place is beautiful".</p><p>"Thank you .I'm happy with it," he says and Jamie is nodding nodding nodding by your side, still smoking and still stroking your back, your hands running up and down her thigh absentmindedly.</p><p>It's evening and the restaurant is filling with diners. Owen makes a toast, his champagne in a simple glass, unlike the ones he offers you and Jamie in a celebratory manner.</p><p>Light is filling through the gaps in the heavy drapes, yellow from the street lights. Underneath the usual dining smells of steam table vegetables and fish and meat, there is an odour of hot metal and smoldering cloth and cigarettes. Also of alcohol and Jamie's close proximity.</p><p>You sit in the dim corner, away from the abrasive lights, the table weighting with too much food. Above the bar is Hannah Grose's beautiful face framed in a golden frame. She's smiling in the picture and you find that you miss her dearly.</p><p>Owen is curious and happy, laughing at Jamie, teasing her softly for not having the nerve to propose, making terrible, familiar puns. You like sitting here, in this corner, with Jamie by your side, with Owen in front of you, some of the old glee present between you, missing a fourth member.</p><p>The only down to the night is the conversation gently steering to more dangerous grounds, to Miles and Flora and Henry, and it stings a little that you haven't been in contact for so long, being busy with the shop and with life and with Jamie. You feel guilty, even though Jamie is attempting a joke and Owen follows in kind. You also feel a little dizzy with champagne. You don't know what to do with your hands, so you take the cigarette from Jamie's fingers and smoke it to the filter, dragging long and slow, letting the smoke tickle your lungs.</p><p>The waiter brings more water and more wine and more food.</p><p>"It's funny, though. The way they talk about Bly," Owen says and it's evident he needs to let this one out. Jamie tenses by your side, a plastic sort of smile plastered on her face.</p><p>Your attention snaps back to Owen, who is gazing sadly at you. Jamie watches you with careful eyes, hand stronger around your waist. You can practically feel her worry dripping from her skin.</p><p>"You talked about what happened?" your voice is small. Unrecognisable. In all your talks with the kids, you've never mentioned it, and you always had a sense that they weren't overly excited to revisit this particular time in their lives, so you never pushed.</p><p>"No," Owen says, glancing at Jamie. "I mean, that's what interesting. They don't remember anything about it".</p><p>Jamie heaves a breath. "What?"</p><p>"Nothing?" your heart is sinking.</p><p>"No. I mentioned Hannah and Flora asked me who I was talking about. It's been this way a while, it turns out".</p><p>"So," your voice sounds choked even to your own ears and the cigarette is making you dizzy, the smoke and the implication of Owen's words settling in your stomach, bitter and scary at the back of your throat. "If they don't remember Hannah, they don’t remember – "</p><p><i>Me</i>, you want to say. <i>What happened</i>.</p><p>"So they've just… forgotten it all?" Jamie's jaw set tight, a muscle jumping in her cheek when she grinds her teeth together with concerning force. She's rubbing reassuring little circles into your back.</p><p>"The details, the specific moments," Owen tries to explain, voice hushed and you're not listening anymore, just nodding your head in rhythm with his words, with Jamie's increasingly hard rubs at your back.</p><p><i>They don't remember,</i> you think in a sick sort of panic. <i>They don't know</i>.</p><p>And then, out of nowhere, past the gleeful mean presence in your chest:</p><p><i>Oh, thank god</i>.</p><p>//</p><p>Even the times you argue, fought, parted, agonised, rejoined – are heaven. They were you and Jamie and <i>us</i> you think miserably. They were alright, they were everything, because it was you and it was Jamie and it was <i>together</i>.</p><p>Memory, you know, is a treacherous little thing. Memory, you know, will wash away. But for the time being, you remember. You remember and you love Jamie, torturing over how this is the end.</p><p>You want to put a match to it. Have done with the memories. But they are all you have left. this useless endless longing. The emptiness of your own body is nothing compared to those memories. This, you know, is something your beast in the jungle could never take.</p><p>Sometime, years from now, maybe ten, maybe fifty, maybe a hundred years, it will be over. Time will erase it all, wear you threadbare, wear you out, erase that place and this woman and you love from your brain. But no exorcism has been enough, and no exorcism will ever be enough. Jamie's eyes will forever be imprinted in you, an eternal part of your being. Her hands and the way she laughs. Not her voice, maybe, not the colour of her irises, maybe. But her. Completely her. You will never forget.</p><p>//</p><p>You kiss her goodbye. She stirs in her sleep, agonised and beautiful and tired. She never slept very well, and the past year has taken its toll on her even in slumber.</p><p>You write one line. One sentence. Something you have to do. You're no longer who you want to be, no longer the woman Jamie loves, the woman who loves her back completely. You are something dangerous that has wrapped her hands around Jamie's throat and was close to squeezing.</p><p><i>I love you with every piece of me left</i>.</p><p>You want that terrified bliss, like falling out of an airplane by mistake. You want Jamie's famished look.</p><p>The last time you see her, she's asleep, in a far away place where you can't touch her. It's like drowning. Everything is darkened and roared, but at the same time silvery, and slow, and clear.</p><p>//</p><p>You leave. You leave with no bags and no suitcases and no coat. You leave with no plan, with no ticket home, with no hope.</p><p>First there's a plane. Then there's a land. You don't let yourself think, submerged in the beast's anger, in her ruin. There is little left of Dani in you, and you've never been so grateful for it.</p><p>You sit and breathe in the smoke of cigarettes. You stare into the void. You feel like if you fell from the sky, it would be easier on everybody.</p><p>But planes don't fall from the sky. Not in your story.</p><p>The plane is chilly and damp or overheated and muddy and you sweat and shover, burning and freezing, as in love. The bristly upholstery of the seat back is musty and comfortless and taps against your cheek. At last you sleep, mouth open, head fell to the side, against the hard shell of the plane. Your ears are ticking, your senses ramble with engine power, along with the plane.</p><p>There is a plane and then there is a land. A thousand miles in the air, then a thousand miles under your feet, with an outer circle of rock and mountains, ice covered, fissured and wrinkled. Then forest tangles with windfall, a matted pelt of it, dead wood rotting under moss, then the odd, familiar clearing. Then heaths and windswept steppes and dry red hills where war of a different kind goes forever.</p><p>Behind there is an ambush of bricks, a house you don't miss, within which there is no one familiar, nothing you want any more. There are defenders and ghosts and specialised tortured you avert your eyes from.</p><p>There are villages, with women you don't know and dirt roads and murky windows and pigwallow. A railroad. An old truck. A pub where you've never got to sit and drink and enjoy. There are factories and warehouses and people who will tell your sordid tale, when you walk at night.</p><p>There is a lake, vast and dark and sheathed in adamant. Something not ancient but not modern, either.</p><p>You walk through the grass, through a yard, through a garden Jamie's loving hands no longer tend to. Never will tend to now. You come through it unscathered, all the way to the lake, where you know you have to go, where is the only place left for you to go.</p><p>You don't look back. You look inward. There is nothing you care for any longer, except for doing it fast and keeping Jamie away.</p><p>The house is camouflaged. You can be excused for confusing it with something it no longer is. You're the tremulous heart of everything, tucked into a red dress. Locked away from danger, keeping the beast at bay. There is no point fighting. You're already only a few steps from the end. The point of it all is to protect Jamie. To protect her from what is at the bottom of this lake, what will become a part of you in just a moment.</p><p>That's what you're going to spend your death doing, your wakeful eternity. You will shield her from it all. If she comes, if she looks, if she tries anything, you will push her back because there is nothing you cannot protect her from. This is all for her. Jamie must live.</p><p>You're at the shore of the lake, your mouth slightly open, mind no longer hang up on anything earthy.</p><p><i>Don't be scared, child,</i> whispers a scratchy voice in your head you haven't heard before.</p><p>And you're not. The beast has already taken everything from you. you have nothing left to give her. Nothing left for you to be scared of. Jamie is heartbroken, all the way back home. You are no longer Dani.</p><p>A space that defines itself as not being there at all is waiting for you. That's why Jamie will never reach you. that's why the beast will never lay a finger on her. That's why you couldn't pin anything down.</p><p>You smile a good smile but you don't stand behind it.</p><p>Jamie, you know, wanted to be here. She wanted to be right here, under the tree, looking at you. She wanted to take courage and climb the walls and take you hand and wander together into the ice cold water. She'll be happy as a crook, being by your side. Dying by your side.</p><p>You could never allow it. Jamie. Brilliant, amazing, brave Jamie. You could never be her doom. And you won't be her doom, if you have any say in it.</p><p>A hum goes gently in your mind, a dance music swelling and fading. You step into the water. There is not a word between you and your monster, and so no bargains are going. It begins again, the delicate, painstaking ransack of the flesh. Muffled, hesitant and dim, as if already underwater.</p><p>You had a good life. A happy life. You spend your most happy moment with Jamie, with someone who even in death you cannot stop loving. You had a good life, you're sure of it. And even if some were strange and painful and scary, it all led you to strong arms and lopsided smiles and brown messy curls and skin that smells like sunshine and damp soil and <i>home</i>.</p><p>You close your eyes.</p><p>You no longer breathe.</p><p>//</p><p>What is the rationale of all this? What is the thing tying you to all the memories? To Jamie's special smell, Jamie's special smile, Jamie's special way of always making you feel better? Souvenirs. Memories. These things you need to remember yourself by. Remember Jamie by.</p><p>The odd thing, you've always known, is the souvenir haunting. <i>Now</i> becomes <i>then</i> even while it is still now. Jamie had insisted on a simple enough philosophy, on a simple enough life.</p><p><i>one day at a time</i>, she always said. But you were still collecting, the both of you. you were still haunting. You were still remembering.</p><p>
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</p><p>//</p><p>She knows there is something demented about this expectation of hers – Dani won't be in the mirror. She won't be in the tub. She won't send her a message like this, or if she does, this is not how it will arrive – but Jamie can't free herself of it. It's hope that spins these fantasies, it's longing that raises these mirages – hope against hope. And longing in a vacuum. Perhaps her mind is slipping, perhaps she's going off the tracks, perhaps she is coming unhinged. <i>unhinged</i> like a broken door, like a rammed gate, like a rusting strongbox.</p><p>When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.</p><p>All Jamie wants is to see a glimpse, a strand of blonde hair. A shine of two mismatched eyes. Anything. Anything at all.</p><p>She thinks perhaps she's been forsaken. It's an outworn word, for-sale, but it describes her plight exactly. Forsaking her is something Dani's ghost might be imagined as doing. On impulse she might die for her, but living for her would be quite different. Jamie has never had any talent for monotony, and so did Dani.</p><p>Despite her better judgment, she waits and watches, month after month. She haunts the mirrors, the tubs, the clogged sinks. Every chance there is a smooth enough surface, she stands, and looks, and waits.</p><p>The next thrilling episode never appears.</p><p>Dani is gone.</p><p>//</p><p>Jamie imagines her dreaming, She imagines Dani dreaming of her, as she is dreaming of Dani. Through a sky the colour of wet slate Jamie flies toward Dani, on dark invisible wings, searching searching, doubling back, drawn by hope and longing, baffled by fear.</p><p>In her dreams, she touches Dani, they intertwine. It's more like a collision, and that is the end of flying. They fall on earth, fouled parachutists, botched and cindery angels, love streaming out behind them like torn silk. There is no enemy and no fire. Just the two of them.</p><p>A day passes. A night. Another day.</p><p>She's old and weak, though not as old as Dani would want her to be, for sure. She buys a ticket and a bottle of coca-cola and there is a young man who reminds her faintly of Owen who offers her his seat.</p><p>Owen has gone to Bly a few years ago, grinning like a fool, eyes gleaming. Jamie can't wait to meet him, but she's not going there for him.</p><p>She looks out through the windows at the long flat fields she remembers all too well, unrolling like stubbled rugs, at the clumps of trees. Her eyes are crossed with drowsiness. In the evening, there is a lingering sunset, receding westward as she approaches Bly.</p><p>Behind Jamie's eyes there is redness. The red of tiny hoarded fires, of explosions in the air.</p><p>Her legs are not as steady as they used to be. She walks slowly, hunched as not to fall, and the sky grows lighter. She can make out water now, on one side of her, flat and shoreless and silvery, the inland lake at last. The hateful, hopeful home of her lover.</p><p>There is an encrusted, enlarged, brick building. A Chappell. A once upon a time home. Jamie doesn't care about it. Too many memories. Not enough time.</p><p>She imagines Dani descending into the early morning, walking through the tall grass, across the gardens. Echoes glory there, blurred loudspeaker voices, their messages obscure. The air smells of smoke and standing water – the smell of fire and cigarettes and the village. It smells also like dust.</p><p>Dani is walking towards her in her dazed dream, young and perfect and beautiful. Gentle smile on her lips. Eyes blue with no hint of brown.</p><p>Joy clutches Jamie by her throat, indistinguishable from panic. She can't see her. Dawn sun comes in through the tall trees, the smokey air ignites, the ground glimmers. Now she's in focus, at the far end of the garden, each detail distinct.</p><p>Eyes, mouth, hand, hair. Blonde and gorgeous as ever. Visible through tremulousness, like a reflection on a shivering pool.</p><p>
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</p><p>//</p><p>Today it's raining, a warm spring rain. The air is opalescent with it. The sound of it like rapids pouring up and over a cliff.</p><p>You gaze at her, over the long straggling garden. It's almost dusk. The wild flowers are in bloom, or you believe it must be. You can't really tell. It's something blue that glimmers down there at the end of the garden, snow in shadow. In the flower beds the shoots shoot jostle upwards, crayon shaped, purple, aqua, red. The scent of moist dirt and fresh growth washes in over you, watery, slippery, with an acid taste to it like the bark of a tree.</p><p>It's not the world. Not the garden. It smells like youth.</p><p>It smells like heartbreak.</p><p>There are hands wrapping around you and you sink into a familiar smell – something like mowed grass and fresh earth and sunny sheets and sweet shampoo.</p><p>"Jamie," you sigh and her embrace tightens.</p><p>"Poppins," she answers and her voice can never be wrong, even while so weak and crispy. The familiar name is no more than a sigh of repletion, a small gasp in the middle of the kind babies make when they turn in their sleep.</p><p>"I forgot how good it felt to be held by you," you confess in a whisper and Jamie's body is slack in your arms.</p><p>You lower her to the damp ground, so small and fragile, tears running down your cheeks.</p><p>"Not crying for me, are you?" there's a raspy voice and a grinning mouth. Two young, stormy eyes in a face so old it makes you giddy with joy, weak with sorrow.</p><p>"This is your idea of a happy ending?" you whisper, eyes closed, mouth agap, not daring to look.</p><p>"Wait," hands circle your waist. Nose buries into your neck. A soft sigh. A breathless relief. "There's more".</p><p>Jamie is slippery and soft, luscious. She is peaceful and plenty. A warm bed at night and sweet dreams. She tulips on the sunny breakfast table, a good cup of coffee. She is all the love you could dream of, in every shape and form, all come together in a young smile and shiny eyes and strong, muscular hands. The old body is discarded, no more Jamie, not any longer. It's just a crisp package no longer holding what is truly important.</p><p>"Jamie," you sigh and there she is, young and beautiful and strong, chest covered in a dark shirt with a silly rock-band print and her hips cocked slightly to the side. Her mouth is grinning.</p><p>You're not crying and not weeping and not wailing. You're not tearing your hair. You just step into her arms, home at last.</p><p>The evening is warm for the season, but you don't feel it. You don't feel anything. You view the world clearly with Jamie by your side. Finally. Finally.</p><p>How blue the sky.</p><p>How green the lake.</p><p>How final the prospect.</p><p>
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</p><p>//</p><p>The eye cannot hold the sight, can't fix the memory of what the two lovers look like. It's as if a breeze blows over the water and the two hugging woman disperse into broken colours, into ripples; then from elsewhere, past the next pillar, the next three, two familiar bodies, together, never apart.</p><p>The shimmering is their absence, but it appears to the outsider as light. It's the simple daily light by which everything around the old manor is illuminated. Every morning and night, every glove and shoe, every chair and plate, every memory, and its owner.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much for reading!</p><p>English is not my first language, and also I'm rocking ADHD like a MF so please excuse any and every misspellings, mistakes, and other Grammarly atrocities.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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